Tuesday, June 19, 2012

An early morning. Not in Cannes.

As I do often when I'm feeling a great deal of pressure, I got in early this morning.

No one was in the office.

Even the rats, which run through the floor at night looking for half-eaten tuna salad sandwiches, had scurried off to the garage just below me where the Sabrett's guys store their rickety carts. There they feast. I imagine them like Roman Grandees gorging while the city falls.

This morning I was kept company by a common housefly. Musca domestica.

It would land on my screen as if to see what I was writing. I swatted at it unsuccessfully with my bear-sized mitts and then, as it flew off, I grabbed it out of mid-air and let it drop dead to the dirty carpet that shows no dirt.

Finally, I was all alone, the only other sound the rumble of an air-conditioning system that was designed with the care of a soviet era nuclear power plant.

When I need to concentrate, I put on my reading glasses--I need them more often now--they act as blinders, forcing my focus on the page.

I read what I had written last night before I left.

Six scripts.

I knocked out a phrase and added a shorter one.

I untyped and retyped.

And there, as people began slowly to fill the $29 desks around me, I became happy with what I had done.

I've had a hard time of late. My serotonin seems to have gone missing. And even two fairly good runs this weekend have still left me with a shortage of endorphins.

But I read again what I wrote.

It's good.

I'm ok.

3 comments:

neishatweed said...

I wish this were facebook so i could like it

Kirkistan said...

This musing delights me. Please get outside for another run.

Anonymous said...

What's bugging you George? Getting older with the prince nez glasses? No fire in the belly? Growing up to realize advertising is the equivlent of working at Macy's (with a few exceptions if youre truly talented)? Doing a Don Draper? Turn to OVid my friend, and Catullus and
Marcus Aurelius. You should be teaching at Columbia or New School. Change of venue might do you good.

Blaine Ericsson