Weeks

Last week I completed a rough draft of a short. Its main theme is how we distract ourselves from the great, important (and sometimes unpleasant) things in life with petty pleasures and busyness. Last week, I also moved to a new apartment, drove 90 miles for a pointless errand in another county, hurried to a gas station as my SUV sucked the final fumes from my tank, scrambled to pay my credit card the evening it was due, painted some hideous 1970s-era laminate cabinets, got up at 5:30 a.m. to attend a Rotary meeting where the speaker lectured about CPR and went to a funeral.

Last week didn’t want me to write. Last week or this week or any week never do. Weeks like to keep your head down with hordes of tiny deadlines, minor crises and minor diversions. They’re happy when you’re washing your car or shining your shoes, happier still when you’re tracking down a new bottle of wine or buying a ticket to the latest summer thriller. They don’t want you to focus on the hard mental work of outlining a plot or polishing a character’s dialogue or mulling over a theme. They don’t want you to ponder the nature of love after a hammer-and-tongs fight with your wife. They don’t want you to think about why the stars seem to fall into patterns on the night sky. They don’t want you to wonder why it’s better to go to the house of mourning rather than the house of mirth.

Strange -- the funeral might have been last week’s best part.

(Picture: CC 2007 by Computer Science Geek)