Ghost Train

Just outside my window the neighbors are fighting in their driveway about something I can’t quite discern. She is speaking in a tone somewhere between mildly annoyed and thoroughly pissed off as he is talking so loudly over her that neither one can hear anything the other is going on about. I am too worn out from a long day at the office to listen to one more useless word of drivel. I pull the window down tight reluctantly because I usually like the smooth evening air sifting in as I write my thoughts into the abyss, the soothing sounds of crickets and low hush of the traffic moving steady along the highway. These moments are so rare for me though I try everything I can to expand the time I have to myself. You steal pockets of time, that is the only way. Steal irreverently from a world which expects you to give everything away endlessly for nothing. As the clouds move in and rain begins to splatter against the windowpane, the substance of this life feels very far away from me. If all we ever truly are is alone, what do people hold onto? How many of us sit quietly in small rooms afraid of our own minds, terrified of what it truly means to love someone else when we don’t even know how to love ourselves. When the words don’t come it is hard for me to think, it is hard for me to feel connected to anything when the words fail me. You cannot foresee the dry spells either, you can write like a motherfucker for weeks at a time and then suddenly not one decent (or even indecent) thing occurs to you to say. The more clever ones, they just walk away- do something else with their stolen slivers of time, something that makes common sense to common people. Not me. I sit until my stomach cramps and my head pounds. I come back to the blank page over and over like an insatiable lover. It drives me absolutely mad when the words don’t show. But for some ridiculous reason, after thirty odd years of this aching melancholic obsession, I always do.