Hesitation and the Dance

I glance back at my journal entries over the last couple of weeks and find more than a handful of ideas for old and new stories I could be writing.

I seem to be entering fertile ground, but my old friend Hesitation keeps rearing his head. He is a formidable opponent, my old friend Hesitation. The commitment and concentration involved in crafting a poem, or a song, or a short story, or heaven forbid a novel, and the requisite time requirements, hold me on the precipice of action, even though I know the exhilaration of finishing the process will be worth it in the end. That’s the stranglehold that Hesitation holds on me.

Even writing this, this journal entry that will become a blog post, this act of writing about Hesitation is one more way that Hesitation snares me in his web. You see, if I am writing about not writing, then I am not writing what I want to write.

There was this girl with a perfect face and strawberry blonde hair, and I was convinced it would be interesting to kiss her or at least dance with her. The problem was I had no idea how to talk to a girl. They were a different species, an alien race, and my tongue would freeze whenever I drew any closer than 10 feet.

“What are you doing?” Hesitation whispers over my shoulder.

“What does it look like?” I say. “I’m trying to write a short story.”

Let’s say her name was Rhiannon, changed to protect innocent memory. I choose the name to disguise the fact that this took place before 1975, because no one named their children Rhiannon until there was a song.

Since she was a girl, I had no idea how to talk to Rhiannon. For all I knew, she either never noticed me or knew me as the weird kid who read comic books and sat in the corner of class. One day they announced the school would be having a dance on Friday night, and I devised a scheme: I would ask Rhiannon to accompany me on every slow dance. Surely we would think of things to say to each other and begin a romance for the ages.

“No, no, no, no, you can’t do this,” Hesitation hisses. “You must think very hard and plan carefully before you start writing, and my goodness, a story about that embarrassing night? You would humiliate yourself.”

“Relax,” I say. “I’m only doing this to illustrate how you keep me in bondage and how the only way I can break free is to sit down and start writing before you can stop me, instead of having endless conversations with you about how I should sit down and start writing.”

“Oh, thank you,” Hesitation sighs. “I was quite alarmed there for a minute.”

“On the other hand,” I admit, “I’m still embarrassed about making a fool of myself that night, more than 60 years ago, and so it might be terrific fodder for a sweet, heartfelt and entertaining story.”

“Don’t you dare,” Hesitation barks. “I absolutely forbid it, do you understand?”

Rhiannon was standing with a group of other girls, and as the strains of the first slow song began to emerge from the record players, I gathered up the courage to walk up to her and ask her to dance. She may have rolled her eyes a bit, but she acquiesced, and as we walked to the dance floor, I began to sweat as I realized I still had no idea what to say to her. This might be the first of a half-dozen silent and awkward trips around the room together. Still, it was nice to feel her warm hand in mine and to press my hand gently against the small of her back.

Even as we make our first turn, somewhere in the background I hear Hesitation screaming at me through the years.

Gently down the stream

What do I see in my mind’s misty eye? An outpost in space. An ocean creature with a sense of humor, but if not an octopus, what? A crumbling empire and a feisty rebel — where have I heard THAT before?

A wanderer armed with nothing but a guitar because weapons never brought him peace. Why is he wandering? Are his loved ones scattered to the winds? Perhaps his sisters and brothers are wandering, too, all of them seeking the others, or seeking a talisman of some sort, the Hitchcockian maguffin that will restore sense to the universe and reunite the family that was.

As for the storyteller, so are his tales scattered to the winds. He remembers bits and pieces, but they refuse to coalesce into any perceivable order. Here is the tailor, and there is the seamstress, but they have no whole cloth and nothing approaching nine yards. The tinker and the almost-princess stroll along the road to the village, each unaware that the dog is trying to tell them something. And the cat is the key to everything, but it is distracted by a family of chipmunks living under the driveway.

The flower blooms for a day once every three years, and she missed it and so she is inconsolable. The photographs show her what she missed but cannot capture every angle or the fragrance or the crowd’s quiet awe, and that is when she becomes obsessed with inventing something better than a camera.

The road is rockier and steeper than he remembers, and he may have to get out of the car and walk, unless he can coax the old beater up one — more — hill — but no. And so the hike is begun. This will add days to the journey, and all he has is hours. Now what?

Am I still in space, or have I been under the sea this whole time? My mind’s misty eye thinks it saw a desert, but then the car was in a mountainous forest, and the brothers and sisters were in every place.

For 1,001 nights the prisoner must tell another story or suffer the ultimate penalty. “Here I am, entertain me or die.” The prisoner loves the challenge and hates the ultimate consequence.

Of course a prehistoric monster rises from the sea, the result of insane testing of weapons too awful for the imagination. What other result could be possible? And of course the spies and their special team are forced to kill one or two dozen guards and miscellaneous underlings.

“You may have seen me in last summer’s No. 1 blockbuster,” he purred to his beautiful companion. “I was Underling #4, the guard who shouted, ‘They’re here!’ before being dismembered by the heroine.”

Somewhere down the beach, she thought she heard an animal howl. It was not a cry of pain; rather it seemed to be a primal cry of ecstasy, as if the creature knew that its mission to maintain and perpetuate the species had been accomplished with the release of the most joyful energy it had ever expended.

All of this passes before my mind’s misty eye, and I thank God for the burst of imagery and music and emotion. For a few moments the anxious feeling had been tucked away and all I could see was what I saw. Which of the sights was real and which the stuff of dreams; who was an authentic friend and who the actual villain?

I sit down with a pack of cards and a roll of dice, and it all begins to unfold in real time — as if anything about time can be described as real.

“Is this the beginning, the middle, or the end?” I ask and am astonished by the answer.

Great Expectations

“OK, here goes,” he said, standing and striding to his writing desk.

‘Where are we going?” she asked.

He sat down, cracked his knuckles, and opened his laptop.

“I am going to write The Great American Novel.”

“Huh,” she said dismissively. “It’s been done. Huck Finn. The Scarlet Letter. Moby-Dick. Project Hail Mary.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, wind starting to seep out of his sails, “this will be MY Great American Novel.”

“I’m telling you, it’s been done,” she said. “Try shooting lower.”

“What, the Great American Short Story?”

“For the love of God, Montresor!” she said.

“Fine, I’m not Poe — but I’m me!”

“Now you’re starting to make a little sense,” she said. “Just write The Greatest Novel You Can Write. You’re not the one who gets to decide whether it’s the next Great American Novel anyway.”

He grinned. “Why are you always right?”

“I don’t know, but that’s why you love me,” she said.