I had a horrific day, and by lunch was stomping around the apartment and crying in the bathroom, trying to call friends back home. That having failed I melodramatically threw open the window and shoved my phone out the window, then sat down and had seven bean soup I'd had boiling in the crockpot. My housemates both peered out at the backyard, where I was told a jackrabbit was sniffing my phone with curiosity.
Back in the office I had the opportunity to enter one of the washing machines on the floor: the tunnel, which is the size of a semi (something only managers are allowed). Bob, the maintenance supervisor, lowered me in by cable and harness. There is a huge chute and, being the girl I am, I decided to slide down head first, and cracked my head on a steel rib in the machine. I started laughing hysterically while Daniel, the guy guiding me through advised feet first might be best.
It was like spelunking in a metal cave, shimmying up the ribs and tunnels--all eight of them. The head engineer could hear me laughing from the outside as I slipped and tripped my way through to the basin.
Later I was sexually harassed by a 60-some year old maintenance man (which two other coworkers witnessed and were fuming about). (Sure would like a hardworking, ballsy girl like you. I'm a man with a capital M. You can't expect me to be faithful. I'm a pervert--this accompanied by a lascivious smile, eyes glued to my Xanterra-badged breasts.) I HATE men like that. Anxious, at the end of the day I crawled under my covers with my stuffed bunny and Szymborska and went to sleep until a friend rousted me for another writing meeting/pity party.
The following is what I wrote:
I can’t write because the sun is shining or the snow is blowing or my head is hurting or the cat is hungry. I can’t write because my big toe hurts when I stubbed it pulling out my laptop. I can’t write because I don’t have my laptop. I can’t write because the smell of smoke and the loud noise in the bar. I can’t write because I am tired and there are things to do. I can’t write because the plant needs watering, the dishes need scrubbed, my head won’t slow down.
I can’t write because there is something inside me that shrinks, that goes to sleep when I pull out the computer. I can’t write because it isn’t perfect, it isn’t right, because I’m not Hemingway or Goethe or Stafford or Szymborska. Because I’m not David Duncan, because I can’t make my words sing, or laugh. I can’t write because if I do, if I do write, my insides would be on the outside, my heart would beat to the wind and air, it would throb and cling, because, let me say this, my words would be bathed in blood.
Slowa we krwi, the Polish say. Words immersed in blood. I keep words on the inside, until a pen stabs it out and my hands are fingerpainting my heart, my life, my soul.
And why do I write? Because I have to, because my soul would die without breath, without beat. I write because the cat is hungry, my friend is sad, my head is hurting, because the sun is shining, because I can draw that sun shinier with my typing, I can Xerox my backside with my bloody words and can post it anonymously to the bulletin board and make my friend smile.
I write because my heart would explode with the backlog of blood, it would be too full if I didn’t leak myself out on paper, and bathe my words in breath and heart, with blood.
