I sat there in the cold morning. A faint mist crept along my back yard. Its fingers tickling at the edge of my porch, but never venturing further as if there were some barrier between the mist and the treated wood. Treated wood, no longer simply the growth from the earth it once was. Maybe that made it unnatural now and thus forever apart from the elemental world from which it came.
Yet as my fingers wrapped around the warmth of my coffee mug, I saw the longing there. The soft caress of a lover's fingers, mist gliding across wood like the lithe hand of a master pianist across the edges of my makeshift barrier between my home, my fortress and the wild earth beyond. Those tinkling digits toying with a lover it could never have. I took a sip and smiled at the overturning coal this image stoked in the back of my mind.
“I know the feeling old friend,” I said to just me, the porch, the mist, and my cat. She stared at me in that curious, judgmental way that only felines, dear friends and significant others are truly capable of. Its that look that seems to be in awe of your simplicity and simultaneously wondering when you're going to learn from your errant ways.
“Alright, alright, I'll get back to work,” I tease. But I know she cares not for what I do. Her interest in the squirrel currently offending her territory is of far greater interest to her than the simple clicking that comes from my office each day. I'm sure she finds what I do incredibly boring. That much time spent in one place is entirely wasted if it does not involve napping. I'm not entirely certain that she's wrong.
So I leave my little sphinx to stalk the backyard and remind the local vermin whose domain this truly is while I retreat to mine. The domain of the office worker, the entrepreneur (when they aren't busy making online videos to mentor the masses on glories they have yet to achieve), and the writer. The writer, of course, being the lowest of the three. What we do is a hobby, unless we're one of those magical creatures like Neil Gaiman, Stephen King or J.K. Rowling who managed to weave straw into gold early on in their careers. The rest of us are odd creatures with a habit of skulking in a room alone for hours at a time, accomplishing nothing and studying a variety of topics online that likely has us on an F.B.I. watch list.
I switch out my coffee mug for a fizzy energy soda. It was one of those nights. I listen to the tiny couples clink against inside of the can, creating some cadence that I might be able to discern were I more musically inclined. The atonal melody continues while I carve a hex into the wood of the desk and sacrifice a live chicken to conjure the spirits of creative writing. True creative writing, not the mind numbing “writing prompts” of college essays.
Write about a time when you were really happy.
Or:
A small boy's toy boat is washed down the river.
Or:
She tried to forget me, but I knew she never would.
I shudder and toss the third one back to the discard pile with the lyrics of washed up Emo singers and rapists to the trash bin where they both belong. The second one is only interesting if there's a man eating clown at the end of the stream, and I think somebody's already done that. And the first one, really? Happy? Could we be any more generic?
I toss the book into the same waste paper basket as the Emo careers of countless douche bags from the early 2000's and lament that the chicken blood has gone cold and the muses aren't coming. I've got feathers all over my office for nothing and my wife is going to be less than thrilled when she finds this. One of those judging looks described earlier is the best I could hope for. That and I think the chicken's wings still have to be flapping while the incantation is made to summon the divine power of story conjuring. This chicken isn't flapping anywhere, unless I were to charge a few hundred volts through it. Or is it a few thousand? I'm not sure where the cut off point is between dancing undead chicken and poultry-geist flambee.
I stare briefly at the wall socket, the image of the pop-n-lock undead chicken dance amusing me far more than it should, and I cast all the mystical implements aside, take a sip from the beat boxing soda can and resume my story. I lament that it doesn't involve undead chickens or the love child of morning fog and a sentient back porch that has suffered decades of suburban caucasity and now warns the world of the impending croc and polo shirt wearing Armageddon foretold by the grizzled, ancient charcoal grill. But perhaps the next one might.
