inkgrrl's inkblog

irony and the peace of the dead… “It’s very ritualistic. What they’re finding is clothing – barely a trace of a human being. In a way, it’s very peaceful there, almost Zen-like. The people are mixed into the dirt. Dust to dust is not just a saying now, it’s become a reality.

One night I found a smashed up office chair; that was the only thing that stood out. Nothing has colour or tone anymore, it’s all just this dull grey. We look but there’s nothing solid except papers and office manuals. Sometimes it seems like only the bureaucracy survived.”

I’ve always felt that irony, unlooked for, was an important component of anything and everything – like getting a medium-nice toaster from my incredibly wealthy cousin when indigent widowed aunts scraped pennies from under their couch cushions to buy me a full set of formal wedding china, an event I greeted at the time with a smirk and a sense that all was right with the world – but this hurts my heart in a cockroaches-are-scuttling-back-under-the-corpses kind of way. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, only that it stirs a grey, burning mist in the back of my throat and I want to cry again.

oh yeah – and I found my character who I lost back in January… whee!!!!

in case I forget him again – he’s the fireman plumber. there. it’s permanent now – matter of public record. yay!!!!

I was sitting in my office late last night contemplating the small pile of bills I need to write checks for before I screw up my credit again, when suddenly the faintest tinkle of Beethoven’s 5th drifted into the room. It must have been pretty loud outside, as all our windows are double-glazed and we have plantation shutters on top of that, but I could barely make out the faintest pastel strains and it sent a dim shiver of nostalgia across the nape of my neck.

I realized one thing that’s missing from my office/writing space is music. I’d always thought it was best to have total quiet when creating, but all my other senses are stimulated in that room – the softly bruised purple walls, the thick oriental rug in yummy vegetable colors, various herbal and flower scents from candles and incense that may or may not be lit at any given time combined with the dusty acid smell of my books, the bowl of hard candies I suck on when I’m working in lieu of pacing and smoking – it’s all there but the sound.

My mom got me a little desk fountain for Christmas – I guess she could tell I needed something to inspire inner peace (she’s good that way) – but I have yet to pour water into it and turn it on. I told AliBaba (my dear hubby who’s far too dignified to be known by that name in public, much less any other nickname) that I needed music – I needed to hear Bach and Nine Inch Nails and The Eagles and anything else and he asked why I don’t listen to music from the web like he does when he’s working.

Thing is, I have a very nice laptop, but there’s probably no laptop in the world with music-quality speakers – I could plug in headphones, but then I’d be tethered to my desk and sometimes I have to pace or flop on the floor and roll around to shake the right words into my brain, so that would be bad as I’d end up dragging the laptop onto the floor and breaking the screen or something equally noxious and ungraceful. So he said he’d buy me a little boombox with a cd and radio and tape player – awww…. he really does everything he can to support me as a writer – there’s not a week that goes by when he’s not asking me what I’m working on and if I’m writing, etc. – not in a nagging way, but in a constructive pushing way. I think he’d give up his office to a baby’s room or guest room before he’d let me give up mine. Maybe ;->