So on and so forth

Hello. I have been think­ing about try­ing to write here again. Or just write. Any­where. But I am not sure. Not sure. Yet. So. How have you been? I hope you have been well. I have been. I have been some­where. Things have happened. Other things have not happened. And other things have happened in other places in the lives of other people. Need­less to say, how­ever, I am not even aware of those things. Or those people. I do not talk about those things. Or those people. We do not speak. We are not on speak­ing terms. So. Yes. Writ­ing. It’s dif­fi­cult. Except it isn’t. Or it shouldn’t be. Mae West came to me in a dream. She looked old. And dead. Obvi­ously. She was pre­cari­ously bal­anced atop a small uni­corn. She spoke to me in sleazy, come hither tones. She said: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say any­thing, and you don’t have to do any­thing. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just write. You know how to write, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and … blow.” I was con­fused. I told her that my name wasn’t Steve. I also told her that she was wrong. That her most fam­ous movie line applied to whist­ling. Not writ­ing. That she was clearly senile in her old age. Or her old dead­ness. She was not amused. She hardened her gaze. She was no longer come hither. She com­manded her pet uni­corn to gouge out my eyes with its myth­ical horn. So now I sit here. Without any eyes. But only myth­ic­ally. All because of Mae. I keep hop­ing that Kath­ar­ine Hep­burn will come to me in a dream and tell me the secret of inspir­a­tion. But she does not. She is too busy lurk­ing in the sub­con­scious of Ian McE­wan. Prob­ably. I don’t know. I have not spoken to Ian McE­wan lately. Or at all. He doesn’t write. He doesn’t call. He doesn’t send me verb­ose billets-doux. Noth­ing. So. Writ­ing. Not yet, I don’t think. I need to make these sur­round­ings more aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing. Except I don’t. That is called pro­cras­tin­a­tion. I need to make these pages pret­tier. Pretty. Pret­tify. No, I don’t. I am still pro­cras­tin­at­ing. But that is what I do. When I don’t write. I arrange. I am a flower arranger. But with words. I make words look good. Look bet­ter. I reju­ven­ate them. With my gouged visual designer’s eyes. Give them a nip here and a tuck there. Espe­cially to ugly words. “Obsol­es­cence,” I say, since obsol­es­cence is a rather hideous word. “Obsol­es­cence, you look twenty years younger. Obsequious, you no longer have a double chin. Obstin­ate, your skin is pos­it­ively glow­ing.” I am work­ing through words begin­ning with ‘ob’ at the moment. As you can tell. This will be a long pro­cess. So I know that I do not need to arrange words in ways that are pleas­ing to the rest­ful gaze. Not needed. Need­less. But I enjoy it. It keeps me off the streets. It keeps me out of gut­ters. Stops me sit­ting on kerbs, with my eyes gouged out by a uni­corn, drink­ing methyl­ated spir­its and shout­ing at passers-by that I used to be some­body. Even though I didn’t. Used to be some­body, that is. I used to be me. I still am me. Still. Am. Appar­ently. But we’re not talk­ing. We’re not on speak­ing terms. I don’t write. I don’t call. I don’t send myself verb­ose billets-doux. Only Ian McE­wan cares. He keeps chat­ting to me via email. Or so I ima­gine. “Come out and play,” he says, like a five-year-old child. “We can build sand­castles in the sand on sandy beaches with buck­ets and spades and then write about build­ing our sand­castles. It will be fun. My mummy has put me in shorts today. Just for this. I have scabby knees.” I ignore him. I have blocked him. Ian McE­wan didn’t want to talk to me before. He didn’t want to oust Mae West from my dreams, heal my unicorn-assaulted eyes and inspire me to write. So I don’t want any­thing to do with him now. Good­bye, Ian McE­wan. Haruki Murakami, though. Haruki’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter. A dif­fer­ent kettle of fish. He keeps call­ing me. Keeps call­ing me at work. In the middle of the night. Every hour of the day. Cry­ing down the phone. Weep­ing. Wail­ing. He is beg­ging me to recom­mence writ­ing. That’s what I think, any­way. In truth, he is speak­ing Japan­ese. Of course. So he could be say­ing any­thing. So I speak to him in sooth­ing tones. Though not erotic tones. We do not have that kind of rela­tion­ship. Yet. “Haruki,” I say. “Haruki, you know I love and respect you. But you have to stop call­ing me. This rela­tion­ship can go nowhere. I am not Japan­ese. I can­not spea­kee de lingo. Inglese. That’s Italian. Oh. Must speak Japan­ese. Konichiwa. Domo arigato. Say­on­ara.” But he doesn’t under­stand. Or he is offen­ded by my clumsy attempts at speak­ing Japan­ese. So he hangs up. Only to call again a few hours later. Weep­ing. And wail­ing. Again. So. Writ­ing. Yes. But no. But yes and no. I am unde­cided. I equi­voc­ate. I vacil­late. I pre­var­ic­ate. I have a thesaurus stuck in my throat that is pre­vent­ing me from vomit­ing. I am try­ing to slowly work it free by drink­ing gal­lons of castor oil. It isn’t work­ing. Writ­ing. Def­in­itely. Pos­sibly. I think I should stop now. Tem­por­ar­ily. Fleet­ingly. Per­haps for longer. Sylvia Plath is on the phone. She is being pestered by Ted Hughes in death. She wants to talk to me about him. She is inter­ested in someone new. Someone younger. Someone virile. Deadly virile. She has met Heath Ledger in heaven and wants to relieve her womanly urges by hav­ing phone sex with me whilst mas­turb­at­ing over center­fold pic­tures of Heath ripped from cheap and taw­dry movie magazines. This is my life. You see? This is my life. I simply don’t have time for writ­ing. My life is filled. Burst­ing. Throb­bing and expect­ant. My head hurts. Both of them. So. Writ­ing. No. I was going to close the com­ments on this post. Not because I hate you. I don’t hate you. I hate Ian McE­wan and Haruki Murakami. I would hate Sylvia Plath too. But she is just about to erupt into a bliss­ful wave of after­life orgasm and it feels rude to inter­rupt. I am find­ing it dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. It is dif­fi­cult when Sylvia Plath is breath­ing heav­ily and errat­ic­ally down the line from heaven. So I don’t hate you. And I haven’t closed the com­ments. I was prob­ably just feel­ing insec­ure. I am cer­tainly feel­ing very brittle. I may snap at any moment. Like a twig. Or a cracker. Or a for­tune cookie. Or a tibia. Sylvia, no. No, Sylvia. I won’t do that. It’s wrong. It would feel wrong. So wrong. Yet so good. So very good. No, I must not. You have sig­ni­fic­ant men­tal health prob­lems. And you’re dead. We shouldn’t for­get that small fact. You are dead. You may have vener­eal dis­eases of the soil. Or worms. Or worse. Your deadened, dried-up lungs might still be full of gas from your oven. And Ted Hughes would hate me if I did you. Even if I did you only vir­tu­ally. He would come after me on a uni­corn, scream­ing poetic obscen­it­ies. And assisted by the black-robed fig­ure of Death wield­ing his scythe. Death hates me. He does not like my writ­ing. He used to read me all the time. But he stopped early last year when I lost the plot and star­ted get­ting too obscure. There he is. Death. With his scythe. And a mali­cious grin on his face. I must go. Mae West, Kath­ar­ine Hep­burn, Ian McE­wan, Haruki Murakami, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes and Heath Ledger are all after me. I’m feel­ing houn­ded and vic­tim­ised. I will be back. Maybe. You know. Don’t wait up. You may pine gently, if you wish. Just don’t wait up. I will be. Thing. Stuff and non­sense. Back. Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. Not right now. Don’t ask awk­ward ques­tions of me. I may snap. Like a cro­codile. Sylvia, stop it. Stop it, Sylvia. I’m going to hang up, Sylvia. I’m going to hang up. That’s it. Quite enough. That’s quite enough of that. And of this. I need to make a swift unicorn-assisted escape. Help me. Goodbye.