Let me tell you, it was a long, dark journey home last night. I’m back home in what I like to call my “home”, and not The Undisclosed Location, which is just another transitory location, much like the hotels I’ve stayed in while in China. I live there, but it’s not a home.
The trip back was fairly simply, and without issue. But there were a couple of magic moments. Just north of Lafayette there is a windmill farm. You won’t see it on Google Maps, but it’s there. It was full dark when I reached the farm, and as I began driving into the area, I Don’t Know How to Love Him–from Jesus Christ, Superstar, in case you’re too young to remember back that far–came on my CD player. And for miles around, as the music played, the aircraft lights atop each windmill blinked on and off together.
I can’t say why, but at that moment it seemed as if there was nothing outside the car, that all traffic had vanished, that I was encored in my own little bubble of time and space. I felt something, not really a presence as much as a longing for things and people to be with me, to share in what I have to offer, and to give me something of their own essence in return. I wanted to join with them, to contribute and create with them.
It was a strange feeling, one I haven’t felt in a very long time. I’d had a moment at work earlier where I saw myself in my own webcam, and the picture wasn’t pretty. Among the night windmills, I felt at the moment the way I want to look, and not see that same person I saw a few hours before ever again.
And then, maybe an hour later–because it does take a while to get through a two-CD set–I was on the final stretch home, and was playing one of the few “perfect” albums ever made, Making Movies, by Dire Straits. It’s perfect in the sense that you can’t point to a single song on the record and say, “Oh, that song sucks.” No, it doesn’t. You’re always going to be wrong, so don’t bother arguing.
What came on during the last few miles to my home was Tunnel of Love, the opening track of the record, and a song with, unquestionallbly, the best intro and outro of any song I’ve ever heard. And it played I was once again alone on a dark road, along a stretch I’ve been many times late at night, something I’ve actually mentioned from time to time. There, alongside me, my Muse rode, and I knew once I got home I was going to write. Not blow it off like I did the last time I traveled home, but really work on my story.
So, after something to eat and some time to relax and getting set it, the first thing I did was jump right back into Couples Dance, and I jumped right into a journal entry that a fictional character wrote in 1932, and while what I put into the computer is probably not the sort of erotica one might enjoy–assuming they enjoy erotica in the first place–it flew out, quickly, very quickly, and within 40 minutes I had 1,050 words completed. Considering how I’ve been writing of late, that’s an attachment worth crowing over.
The fact that the words flew out like they did told me I’m in a good place. I’m already thinking that Couples Dance might actually top 30,000 words, or at least get damn close to it, and I told a online friend last night, if that happens I might consider looking through the story and seeing if there is a possibility of expanding it over 40,000 words and taking it into novel territory. I hate to do that, because I’m a firm believer in making a story as long as it needs to be, and no longer. If it should be 30,000 words, then that’s it, story’s over. To pad it out may hurt it . . . then again, maybe it’ll add something to the story that’s missing. When I finish the first draft and get into editing it, I’ll know.
I’m back in a good place; not just in my house, but in my feelings. This is where I get my satisfaction, creating, building . . . making my own movies for those to see in their imagination. This is what I will do, and with the first month of 2012 behind us, the Night Windmills gave me hope.
There are not there for one to rail again: they exist make you see, and feel, that dreams are possible.
