This is the morning routing. This is the mourning routine. This is today. But it’s representational.
Wake up at 4:50 a.m. for arbitrary, maybe-I’ll-finally-sit-outside-this-morning reasons. Fire up the despair machine, like you have told yourself you never would. Read that the legislature is going to be going back in session because the roads are falling apart. Read that another trans girl is going to experience houselessness soon. Read that Buzz Osborne and Brian Eno agree that the best way to combat writer’s block is to just get started. Just to do it.
Put your phone aside. Sit at the big screen, and open up Obsidian.md. Open today’s daily note, and start as bad prose.
Lately you’ve been starting with bad prose. Just dumping on the page whatever it is that you can bleed out. This morning, it’s about getting up in the morning and letting your brain get taken over by the worms of news. It’s about the article you read about Palmer Luckey, how he became a defense contractor to troll the folks that fucked him over when he was fired from Facebook. Remember that he seems like a lot of angry trans women that you know. Remember that Israel is starving Gaza, that a bunch of babies are going to be dying soon. Remember that you are a bad pacifist. Write it out.
Why do you go to 3 line stanzas? You started that in college. Counting beats, counting feet. Finding some structure to hang your words on. It works, so why change? Emily Dickinson wrote hymns, the same 4/3/4/3 stanzas for her whole creative life. Sometimes you stick with what speaks to you.
A dead trans girl shows up again. That seems to be all you are writing about right now. It’s getting exhausting to keep scraping at that scab. That’s how you get scars. But its also how you get calluses. Tough bitch blues.
Put on Mope Grooves Box of Dark Roses again. Hear Stevie say “stay alive no matter what.” She didn’t stay alive.
20 minutes? 30 minutes? First thought best thought. Get stuck? Lower your standards. You write nothing like Bill Stafford or Allen Ginsberg, but you’ve taken those to heart. You write mostly first drafts. Release mostly first drafts. You only want what comes next.
Eternity only comes for those that show up.
Print it out. Put it on instagram. Put it on the sadgrls. Ask desperately for help to find something else to write about that is not trans girls dying. Realize you broke a rule about posting a message to everyone. Hate yourself a little bit for forgetting the rules again.
Take a shower. Make coffee (you always forget to make coffee in the morning). Try to be kind to your husband. Today is an unkind day.
Go to work. Type this up. Put it in a folder on dropbox. Watch it send to the world. Send a link to E. because you are doing that right now. Try to be ready for the rest of the day. The writing is all that feels real. And it’s time to think of something to write about that isn’t about dead trans girls. The necromancy of it is starting to eat at your soul.