Try as he might, there was a large empty screen in front of where he sat. His fingers, poised at their home position, teased him with their readiness. It was now or never, he knew. He chose never and continued to stare. He chewed on the end of an oversized straw, and peeled rims of plastic from its end. His work would wait until the screen stopped laughing. That is, if it ever stopped laughing. Its maw grew large and threatened to swallow him along with the blank page. He wondered what the belly of a blank page would look like.

Today will be replete with more consternated efforts to write. I don’t seem to have many thoughts or beliefs. I read through two New Yorkers on the plane. I should steal their thoughts and pawn them off as mine. Here’s a goody (one of the rare comics where I laughed out loud, as in, “LOL for real!”): a writer is sitting in front of an audience. A sign above his head says: “Author reading today, 3pm.” The audience members look angry. One of them says, “Aloud!” Now that’s funny! I don’t think the passengers around me shared in the humor, probably because they were not seeing what I was seeing (as in the comic, not the deeper meaning, which I could spend paragraphs on—that is, if I knew anything about deeper meanings).

What are my thoughts, my beliefs? Why am I not sharing them? What is in it for me? Is there ever anything in it for me?

It’s hot on the airplane. I spent the night sick, alternately shaking from the cold and pounding my head against the pillow to try to stop it from thumping. My headache reminded me of the Pathological Yawning’s headaches. Breathing felt labored and I moaned and groaned until Doolies took pity on me. She nursed me through the night, providing a heat pad to keep me warm and a nasty Chinese dried herbal packet, which she said contained Vitamin C. I have my doubts. I think you’re supposed to pour the contents of the packet into hot water and drink it. Doolies told me to rip open the packet and pour it into my mouth. I did so and the dried leaves (or whatever they were) stuck to the crevices in my mouth, sucking the moisture until I did not think I could swallow. I drank and gargled hot water she brought and dislodged most of the leaves. Nasty stuff. After that and the heat pad I found sleep.

We woke early to catch our morning flight, leaving the Castle before seven. I was not a happy camper in the morning, although I woke with only the remnants of a headache and a stuffing that goes way beyond turkey. Even now I feel its aftereffects. My nose, clear in one nostril, feels like its sucking in acrid chlorinated air with each breath. How’s that for being a complaining baby?

On the airplane when I turn my head this way and that I’m blinded by the sun from a passenger’s window. I keep my head just so and open the computer. There’s much about and much ado, although the doings are not much and what’s about is barely worth mentioning. I have so few stories to tell and yet so many words to share.

The babies cried in the back of the plane. I waited for fondness to find me. She kept her distance. Something will happen and I’ll record its happenings. I can’t cut a word. Not a single word from this after it is done. If only it were that easy.

My ears pop like corn. I tend to reuse stuff. I repeat it endlessly hoping to suck new life from it. It wasn’t that clever the first time I used it. I don’t know why I expect the millionth to be much different.

After dinner, Doolies and her sisters sit around. They play piano and Doolies sings, a karaoke night but with live music. Then they run out of music to play and sing, and we sit around and talk.

It’s another slow night and another forced ending. I don’t even have the snippets of story to turn this into anything. I understand that. I know this is worthless and a waste. But I push through it and put the words down. It’s about discipline. Much in life is about discipline. About forcing yourself to do something that you may not want to do, at least in the short term, but that you’re glad you did in the long term.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be glad to have written these paragraphs. That’s not true. Even today, as I waited for our baggage to revolve on the conveyor belt, I read through my old posts and realized that while I waste tremendous words consternating, some of those words are entertaining to me (as most of my words are, I realize—writers are nothing if not self-absorbed). I enjoy that I wrote much of what I write. It’s the writing part that’s not always fun. That’s not true. Even this writing, this forced put words on the paper and get done with it so I can go to sleep and relax my aching body, even this is not painful. I enjoy the words and the flow and the hopes. That’s what it’s always about for me: there is this tiny voice in my head that hopes one of these words will spark something in me that will flame into something Good. It may not be today or even this year, but it’s that hope that keeps me going. That keeps me, as I repeat often, putting one word in front of the next to form sentences that may or may not make sense.

It’s getting close to sleepy time. Even by west coast time, it’s late. We spent too much time downstairs talking and playing piano and singing. Well, I didn’t do any of those things, but I did sit around and listen to others play and sing and talk. I’m sated for the evening. The hope will spring eternal for tomorrow. I can’t fail forever, right? One of these days, these worthless exercises will bloom and I’ll have something to show for it. If nothing else then the chronicle of my failures should, in itself, be entertaining.