Despair…or Hope?

It’s been a quiet weekend for me, the kind I long for when I peer into a future with a busy calendar. I imagine in my head what it might feel like to lie on the couch and read all weekend, knowing the near impossibility of the scenario, especially if it includes a backdrop of rain. Yes, I grew up in the Pacific NW. Reading was how I coped with being cooped up inside.

The miraculous happened! No, not rain – thunder and lightning with a few heavy drops, maybe, but not the drizzly stuff of my childhood. I spent the weekend reading! Sure, I went to Mass and took a walk to the grocery store, but mostly I read all weekend. I had a do-not-disturb sign stuck to my forehead – figuratively. I read one entire book and have now gotten through nearly thirty chapters of a second one. The first was a comedic ghost story murder mystery (the genre I write; yes, it actually is a genre!), and the other is a London-based Victorian murder mystery with no ghosts. At least, none are mentioned. Victorian-era London had to have been riddled with the ghosts of poor little orphans who died in gutters, not to mention the poor women who died at the hands of Jack the Ripper.

The above image of my mess attests to a quiet shut-in weekend, in which I managed a little creativity, too. I’m currently writing an awful song with strings of rima asonancia. When I try to sing my scrawls, I despair and wonder if the brain has to be wired differently to write song lyrics that are catchy rather than trying too hard to be evocative. The first two lines are passable: Iba a pescar de noche / en mi barquito de reproche. Then it all falls apart. I love songs about fishing, so it’s meant to have a theme about nets coming up empty until the POV character in the song sees someone standing on shore. Yes, the theme is stolen from John 21, except like any Christianesque pop song, it’s meant to be ambiguous – is it a love song or a praise song? The Puritanical types hate that kind of ambiguity because they don’t really comprehend the human soul and how imagery and parables function in it. They just want some good exegesis. I guess my wiring could be worse.

I bought this when I walked to the grocery store, but I buy alcohol so infrequently that I forgot that I no longer own a corkscrew. I tried to pull the cork out with a screwdriver, and instead forced it in, and the wine splashed everywhere. I do mean everywhere, all over the walls and in my eyes. In addition to tempranillo with the essence of cherry and notes of peppery cork, I’ve made myself a few comfort meals like lentils, homemade flatbread, and bacon, and settled in as if for a week. Or two. Too bad I have to go back to work just when the Victorian cozy is getting exciting.

For a minute, I forgot why I titled this as an essential question between hope and despair. The truth is I tend towards despair when I’m not following my usual routine of work, work, more work, and other activities on the to-do list. That’s what it means to be an adult, right? Being lazy isn’t on the list. And yet…I write books for entertainment. I write books because I love to read. The fact that I can get away with wasting hours reading over the weekend and not have my life collapse around me gives me hope. If I can get away with it, so can others.

More than that, if I can still get lost in the joy of reading, so can others. Thirty years ago, being a bookworm was a little weird, but there were many of us weirdos out there. These days, it seems like those weirdos are becoming a smaller and smaller group of outliers. Nobody reads because they don’t have the attention span. They watch or listen to content all day in the background, their noses pressed to their phones. What are they looking at? Who knows, but its most likely not their kindle app. I’m sadly not an outlier in that regard, being addicted to listening to YouTube content. This lazy weekend proves that social media has not entirely damaged my ability to focus for hours on long-form prose.

**I’m not going to lie. I read at least a little every night before bed, so I didn’t approach this marathon with no prior training. Please consult your physician before you, too, attempt to use screwdrivers and whatever else you need to make it through.**