justwrite 3 november

There is no book I'd want to live in instead of my own life. Literature is stuffed with themes, seemingly more than real life—and it's real strife that makes those happen, that deliver our minds to the author-defined goals. We suppose we'd be better off sometimes if the right mind guided us gently and laughing down the right path, but it's just a trap—no way to say that the right mind is someone else's. To test your health, abandon wealth, fall in love, shove to the top of some shaky ladder: what matters is left in your own hands, your own commands press down the enter key, keeping free those vital seconds ripe for wrecking the rest of the plan. This business is the bliss, the life that wouldn't survive a writing workshop—a freak motorcycle purchase, a streetcorner trombonist, the worst haircut in the hit parade and the accidental friendship that results—all these catapult life forward, not forewarned or prepared in any way, but to say otherwise is to surmise that mystery is reducible to a crucible of plot plans, that scanning the twists will straighten them out, shake off the doubt and tangle the chords. Out of tune with the moon is no way to be, but if you can't break free of the track, you're getting sent back to the scrap pile. We all file for returns, but he who doesn't earn doesn't get paid in cash to play in the trash, just earns interest on the laughs and a lax attraction to action that's hardly foreshadowed.