February Sweeps - Day 10

I watched the Academy Awards last night, enjoyed most of it.

I used to imagine what I'd say if I ever won an Oscar.  Now I've put away such dreams (hey, I got one-and-a-half Parsec Awards, and that's nice), though, to be honest, I still sometimes wonder what I'd say if it were me going up there.

To be honest, I don't have to have an Academy Award.  Or any awards, really.  I just want to create something that really speaks to people, that makes some kind of impact, that moves, or surprises, or scares, or amuses people enough that

But I also wonder about the things that are missing in my life, and would I trade the good things (that maybe I take for granted) for those things that I ache for.   If that creepy guy said I could get ____ (fill in the blank for all that I'm missing) but I could never write another word again, I think it would be a hard trade (mostly because I'd always wonder if I COULD have written the something above), but I'd make it.

If that makes me seem weak, yeah, well.  Maybe I'm just tired.

I think I dissed Billie Eilish the other day on here or on Facebook.  I said I just didn't get her, and that she makes me feel like this:

But then, I heard that Everything I Wanted song, and I thought, "Well, maybe this one doesn't make me feel a hundred years old.  Not like the other one."

And now I keep listening to it, over and over again.  There was something hypnotic about it at first, but now it just communicates this feeling to me, similar to what I get from Jimi Hendrix's excellent Little Wing.  Eilish sings that she had a dream that she killed herself and nobody mourned, and she found, in suicide, everything she wanted.  And then her partner (who I assumed was a boyfriend/girlfriend, but turned out to be her brother), tells her she's loved and wanted and the naysayers (or is it the fans?) don't deserve her.

I had never heard the song before January, and now I've heard it . . . oh, let's say forty times (forty-two by the time I post this).

But when I wake up, I see
You with me.  And you say, 
"As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you."

Wow.  It's what we want to hear from our moms and dads when we're little kids after a bad dream, and maybe we never quite outgrow that.  I certainly haven't.

Apropos of nothing, there was an old man that used to come into the video store where I worked every single day (he came in every single day, not just the days I worked).  My fellow employees and I used to make fun of him and complain about him (and the literally crazy things he'd tell us), and I remember doing a drawing of him that we kept behind the counter.  He would come in and fiddle with the electronics, even though we'd told him not to (and there was a sign saying so), and he'd buy a new release, then return it the next day, claiming there was something wrong with it to get his money back.  

He was probably mentally unstable, but I think about him now, and it's with fondness rather than irritation.  He once told my coworker Mick what his great regret in life was (it was sexual, so I won't share it, in case you've eaten recently), and Mick told the rest of us . . .

But it's not so funny anymore.  That man is almost certainly dead now . . . and how different from him am I?  Or will be soon?

I'm not going to get Everything I Ever Wanted (I'd be lucky to get to have that dream, frankly), and I feel like the closest I'm ever going to come is through my art.  Through my characters, happy endings are possible.  Magic is possible.  Anything, I guess, is possible.  So, I'll keep on doing it...

...unless some Faustian bargain comes along where I can trade this for that.  Then all bets are off.

So, I took my nephew to his basketball practice today, and I had just long enough to sit down and get my words pounded out while I waited for him.  In fact, I grumbled when it was time to go pick him up because I was really enjoying what I was writing (I'm back to "The Last Friday In December," despite not having finished "Never Let Him Go" or the story I started yesterday--"Fatherless Child").  I think, had I had a bit more time, I would've gotten to the meat and potatoes of the story (basically, introducing a new character that should span two or three of these "Dead & Breakfast" stories).  On Wednesday (his next practice), I'm taking my laptop with me, and just sitting there the whole time.

As it stands, I didn't get all that much in (went through "Fisher & Florence" and added another couple hundred words), but I still wrote (and exercised, between you and me) every day this month.

Words Today: 1,625
Words Total: 13,232

Hey, and I didn't even cry tod . . . oh wait, I nearly finished the book I've been reading.  And at least two tears unabashedly fell.  This has been quite a wild ride, folks.  When it ends, I hope I decide it was a good one.