"A Morning of Nothing, and Everything"

Sometimes I don’t want to write anymore. It’s embarrassing to admit, given how much of my life is built around the ritual of sitting down and shaping words, but there it is. My editor tore apart a long, grueling chapter I’d written — a chapter I thought had marrow in it — and the critique sucked whatever life I believed I had right out of me. On mornings like that, watching a maintenance worker water flowers feels far more exciting than anything happening on the page.
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And then, as it always does, memory arrives uninvited. This time last year was heavy with a sadness I still don’t like to look at directly. The heart aches in its own stubborn way, especially when the person you cared for most — your own mother — dies and leaves you standing in the world a little more alone than you expected to be.

But today, after wandering around town in the AM, I felt something shift. Maybe not dramatically, but enough. Enough to think: Alright. Enough daily logs. Enough picture-taking. Enough Monology Go! Let’s get back to fiction. Something has to give, and maybe it’s time for Painted People to stop waiting for me to feel brave.

Still, the morning had its small pleasures. I needed to mail a letter and had only one stamp, so I walked up the steps from Central to Peekskill’s impressive post office — that 1930–1931 neoclassical brick beauty with its arches and limestone trim. I thought I’d breeze in, hand the letter to the postmaster, and be done. Instead, there were six people ahead of me and only one window open. The rest were closed, as usual, casualties of staff shortages and budget cuts. A typical American post office scene, but somehow still comforting in its predictability.

Back down South Street, I browsed a few books at Field Bookstore, then hurried off to my next appointment. A typical day, I suppose, for a person who writes and procrastinates but eventually writes — wandering through “Our Town of Peekskill” as it slowly woke up. People going about their business. School kids waiting for buses. The quiet choreography of a town stretching into its morning.

I ran into Patrick from Whiskey River, walking with his daughter. He wished me a good day. I wished him one back. Then I moved along to meet the guy I was supposed to meet, and that was my boring morning.

Though strangely enough, I was happy — happy to be free of so many things, even if only for a few hours. Happy to feel the faint tug of fiction calling me back. Happy to remember that even a day of “nothing happening” can still be a day worth writing down.