Diffusing Bombs

2024.08.23

Good morning that wonderful way.

That's a good name for an anthology of this work:

"That Wonderful Way."

If it's really in your blood, if your conviction truly finds itself in the writer's life, then you are always doing only two things: Writing or not Writing.

So, you're either in a place where peace is easy or working to get to one.

Most of my life was spent working to get to one.
Whether illness, or the felt necessary problems and duties of other people, something seemed to require being overcome just to get a moment to work.

I had to become my own doctor and security guard.

A writer doesn't put much stock in stuff.
Other peoples' props.
Somewhere reliably safe and a trustworthy instrument or two to write with are all we require.

To make words real, to take the smoke of thoughts and dreams and make something solid out of them.

That's the job.

Like those scenes in hour long television shows that culminate to the protagonists diffusing a bomb.
The whole cast is quiet.
Should he cut the red wire or the blue... maybe it's the yellow?

A quiet circle of trust forms around him and then they all exhale and the show is over.
Everyone is back home the day is won.

I've spent most my hours diffusing bombs just to get everyone back home so I could do my actual work.

See the bombs are other people's expectations.
It is so rarely an explosive.
Nothing will explode but their expectation that something needs to.

We're more okay than we let ourselves be.
If the same goal can be accomplished with a peace of mind, then it should be.

We ought to use our relationships to build things from those relationships and not to increase or decrease tensions.

If we're apprehensive chances are more than good that those involved in whatever we're working on are, too.

Most human drama is a waste of time.

The dog is quiet. The house is asleep. The music doesn't want to please anyone else, just plays.

The plane flying by isn't going anywhere, just taking away it's noise.