Friday, July 12, 2013
Up at 3, but fell back asleep at 5 and stayed that way until 8. Felt the need to organize, so I created new space in my garage, preparing for the boxes I acquired from mom's house in Bellingham. Still processing my road trip and mom's move to AZ. There's a lot to write about. Okay, an endless amount to write about. Drinkers are the hardest working people I know. Most drinkers I know are functional and extremely hardworking. Movies rarely capture that, but it's so true. Drinkers work very hard. They have to in order to keep things afloat. Drinkers love to engage. They don't know it, but they live for the drama of little meaningless moments, which to them seem important at the time, but from my perspective sound like endless bickering over nothing. And it's constant. The tit-for-tat never ends. Ever. It simply stops with sleep, then starts all over again the next day. Drinkers have absolutely no idea how difficult they are to be around for any length of time. No idea whatsoever. And it gets worse with age. So much worse. Especially after 45 and even more so after 60. My head is still spinning. I'm actually in the perfect state of mind to write Intervention Island. Today, I've been playing around with the idea of Reality TV as a form of punishment by the producer who creates the show. One reason why there is so much pain in the world is punishment feels so good to inflict upon those who deserve to be punished. That feeling doesn't go away. It can only be rounded up and placed in some sort of internal box labeled "dark side." I've been pretty good at keeping that dark side disengaged, thank goodness, but drinkers will use every trick in the book to coax my dark side out. It's part of the drinkers dance, the noise they need to stay lit up and active in their mad need for dysfunctional stimulation. The best thing about being almost 50 is I've figured this out, I've figured out how to be with drinkers for extended periods of time without engaging in the chaos. I simply don't engage at all. I let them be, let them do, let them drink and say whatever they need to say. Sometimes it's impossible not to slap their wrist, especially when they're in my face with a tone that sounds like my Dad 40 years ago, but beyond that, I'm keeping it together. I can last a good four or five days, then it's time to go back to the safe, sane wonderful silence of my Bay Area paradise. One thing that never gets talked about much is that America, in all its hardworking greatness, is a drinking country. It explains a lot of the insanity out there, especially by drinkers over 60. As I think about my writing and my stories, I see a great thematic thread connecting everything I write together, and yet, I wonder if anyone in NY will even notice what it is. With the exception of Sam Stoloff, they didn't notice any of it in Julia Milan. It didn't even register with them, even though Julia and her mom were doing that dance on every page. That novel came from somewhere, as did every other novel and screenplay I've written. The adult child in me is coming out to play, grounded, clear-eyed and ready to put on paper all that I've observed these past two weeks and all that I've observed these past 50 years.
