The Flight of the Rocketman

"I realized that the greatest sin is sadness, the only one that is an offense to life."
-- "Dona Flor and her Two Husbands," Jorge Amado

And all at once, things are starting to turn good for me. I keep hinting at something that keeps promising itself and then disappearing, and then coming up and then disappearing again. Well, it happened finally. It was wonderful. It was everything I thought it would be. It was goofy and wacky and downright fun. I can't really talk about it right now, so I won't. But trust me, I will when I am allowed to. You can't keep my mouth from yacking away at something like that...

And then, a dry spell hit in the landscape of my professional writing career and then all of a sudden, work, work, work. That always spell money for me. Though, honestly, I really want to give writing a break. I don't want it to be my bread and butter anymore. I just want to write for myself, you know? Write short stories, songs, poetry, essays and even journal entries like this. I just want to be able to enjoy writing again, you know? I can't stand all this writing for money. Writing for things I don't really want to write about. It's become a job, all of a sudden. I know I'm good at it. I know it doesn't come easy for other people. I know that it comes easy for me. But that doesn't mean I have to stop enjoying it. When it has reached that point, I know that it's time to move on.

I'm reading again. Cold Mountain just killed itself. Beautiful book, really, but damn slow. The pacing was just too damn slow for me. I couldn't take it. I was struggling. I had to put it down and couldn't get back to reading for a long time. Then I picked up Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband and was just in love with reading all over again. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous book. Now, I'm enjoying Stephen King's On Writing and it's lovely. It's very honest and straight-forward. Once again, I'm reviving my determination to finish Everyday Modern Gods, the God Damned novel I've been dying to write since 2000. I want to go after it again, the muse, grab it by the feet and chain `em to my bed (which is really close to the computer) and have `em prompt me above the sound of the stereo.

And of course, there's something else. Something that has a special meaning for the Nelly Furtado song Try and something that caused me to write my very first song: Your Name on my Hand. I can't wait to put the music in. I already have it in my head but since I can't read or write chords, I have to wait for someone to translate it for me. But it's all in my head and as the days go by, I get more and more proud of what I've done. A song with melody and everything. And it's pretty good. I'm really proud of it.

It's strange, but if you really believe in astrology it works somehow. The year of the Sheep is not suppose to be good for those of that year, like I am. The year of the Monkey is supposed to be good for the Sheep person and so far, it has. I am really, truly affected by the stars, by my sign. Every little astrological reading of my personality holds true - Pisces, Sheep, born on the Day of Relativity. Everything has gotten me down to a tee. It's quite amazing. Frustrating at times, as well, but bewildering.

What a lovely word! Bewildering. It truly captures the feel of the word. I love it. I got to use it somewhere. I just got to!