Genius at Work

My wife was more than skeptical of the shut-in plan. I insisted that my universe of distractions was making it impossible for me to write like I used to, and that this was the only way to recapture the magic. Both of us left untouched the possibility that my heavy smoking and drinking also figured into the equation. I could still drink with the best of them, but I felt strangely unmoored drinking in our suburban house while folding laundry or whatever. And I had quit smoking because we both agreed that dying of lung cancer would put a crimp in our plans to live together happily for the rest of our lives.

Realistically, I think maybe I wanted to put a lot of effort into this shut-in and write in the 'office' venture because I wanted to know once and for all if I could make this life happen. Somewhere in my head, I knew if I could get away with this, the experiment would end with me knowing definitely if I was a barista or a writer. I never highlighted this a motive for the plan. All I said was that I had too many distractions.

It's possible that my wife also secretly believed that I was going a little nuts. She has a real job, she goes places and types emails and has conference calls with Germany (so efficient), and in contrast, I'm just about fringe material. I had a string of interesting but unfulfilling jobs with non-profit organizations, all revolving around parlaying a meager talent with computers and a powerful ability to bullshit older ex-hippies. It wasn't a career, that's for sure.

I was basically on day two of the shut-in thing, though I was counting it as the first day, because I was all wopperjarred off getting the spit-flying call from the coffeeshop the day before. I thought things were pretty clear when I walked out with three hours left in the shift, after discussing my leave of absence, that I wasn't coming back. This was not the case. Things got ugly, certain statements were made, and a fourth stint at the Gigantic Coffeeshop Chain is probably not in the cards.

There I am sitting on a huge spool that once held shielding for underground cable with a keyboard on my lap and eleven words on the screen when my sister walks into the office-shed. She is already talking, and I am looking to see who is coming in with her, but it turns out she had just started talking to me early. It is 9:48 am.

"...and I just don't think it's going to work," my sister is saying. With these nine words, I'm prepared to conclude that my wife has summoned my sister to talk some sense into me, which would be rich. Though my wife is surely through talking about this, her efforts to decode whatever it is that is happening in the shed have only begun.

"I've got to figure out if I can do this, Lis."

"What? What is it that you're figuring out? People don't hide in sheds when they're figuring things out. They go to therapy, or they talk to their preacher, or their friends or whatever. Or they just accept what's happening and, you know, go to work."

My sister had never been happy at a job in her entire adult life. She worked at a bank once and liked it when they made her sit in the little tiny box (a shed, if you think about it) and process transactions for people too lazy to get out of their cars to conduct their banking business.

I rested the keyboard on a shiny box that probably held something organic and frozen once because the shine came from an impressive amount of wax treatment on the cardboard. I hadn't been writing very much, and, truth be told, at the moment my sister came in, I was wondering how people typed long messages on Blackberries because the keys were smaller than baby teeth and my thumbs would have pressed a half-dozen keys at a time.

"When I was in college, I couldn't keep it in, Lis. I was writing two columns, two reviews and two editorials a week, and probably throwing two more stories worth of work into the paper as completely re-written work by idiots. I used to be a writer. I want to be one again."

Lisa didn't see the agony of this former glory. She was terribly practical. "Then get a job as a writer." She was already leaving. I could see her heart wasn't really in this discussion. She wasn't really a tenacious opponent in arguments of this type, which is something that comes with middle childhood.

I had stood up to turn a record over (the shed-office was also the home of the LP collection and the turntable). She assumed I was rising to hug her goodbye. I complied. As she left, I heard her issue a fairly standard Lisa-dismissal to my wife, the kind we all heard about whatever parent or other sibling was under discussion. It was 10:09 am. Don Cherry and Gato Barbieri started talking on the back half of "Complete Communion." I sat on the big spool and typed the words "Blackberry teeth."