Eating and Picking and Blackening.

I stood at the window and the snow fell. The afternoon was setting in and I had done nothing and yesterday I had done nothing and the day before and on and on forever it seemed. The house was dark. I had the curtains drawn and the lights off. Marie would call it a cave. I'd open them when she was home, so long as it was still light out though I thought it wouldn't be. 

Every morning I woke and said I would do something. I would create something. A story. A painting. A song. Sometimes I imagined things far more ambitious. A short film. A graphic novel. A puppet show in eight acts. I drank my tea and looked out at the snow. White, tiny, and all consuming. I had painted one painting in the past month. I had written a three line poem. I had written and scratched what I assumed would be the beginning of my first good story of the year. I couldn't focus. I didn't necessarily want to. 

I sat at the computer, or behind a notebook or canvas and I would stare at its perfect nothing and I would try to see all of the beautiful things I would cover them with and for fifteen minutes I would be there, in that moment of creativity. I would know what would happen. I could see it all spread out before me, and I would understand how great it would be. But I'd be out of wine, or I'd only have twenty minutes, or Doubt would show up.

Knocking on the door. Knowing I'm home. He has a box of wine under his arm and he knows all the great writers and all of the great bands, and all of the real artists and he sits on my couch and we talk about how nice it must be to be one of them and the daylight fades and we don't laugh or smile or joke. We just talk about how nice it would be and know that we aren't that. We aren't those people. We aren't genius or marketable or connected or special. We glance at each other in the bathroom and Doubt looks like me. He has my hair, but his is thicker. He has my eyes, but mine are dimmer. I am heavier than him, but not by much. He's better than me, and like everyone else, I can't understand why. I love. I love my art. I love my need to make. I respect the process and the journey and I believe I may have something to say and sometimes people tell me I make such nice things. It's nice of them, but somehow void.

I stood at the window and the snow fell. I stood at the window and the snow fell and I was ashamed a little. This time I was wasting feeling sorry for myself.

I could be tapping away or strumming away or mixing color and sound and word and I have nothing to do, so what is the goddamned problem? I have nowhere to be. Unemployment rolls in and hours roll out and maybe I'm tired now. Maybe the winter sits in me like a whispering cancer. Eating and picking and blackening. 

There was no Doubt today. The snow fell and his footsteps never appeared in it and that was fine.

Winter.

Marie says winter hits me hard.

I thought about walking to the store for beer. I didn't have any boots and my unemployment was late.