A couple of weeks ago, I went to Panama. All I wanted to do out there, was sit on a beach and immerse myself in The Pacific - some sort of quasi-metaphysical quest for cleansing and recharge. So I packed light. A few shorts and T-shirts, the obligatory couple of white button down shirts and some underwear. I packed it all into the overnight bag I had borrowed from The Luxembourger, and threw it on the floor next to my bed, where it sat half empty and projecting a depression at it's unfulfilled potential. It was still in that pose, slouched over and deflated by emptiness, when I arose at 4:30am to head to LaGuardia Airport. It called for more contents. Dazed by the premature rise from slumber, I scanned my room looking for what void in packing I had left. Of course! I had only thought of clothing, but I had forgotten to preempt for other requirements of eventualities. In the muted shadows of the early dawn, I danced around my bedroom gathering a couple of F. Scott books, a Hemingway and even a Saul Bellow. Then I tossed in the iPod, followed by all my writing gear. In went a half dozen varieties of pencils, a couple of sharpeners and the black Moleskin. Ontop of all that, went a copy of Vanity Fair and the bag was now full;. my luggage was now complete. I had packed 'Distraction'.
What's your Distraction? And what does it Distract you from?
Do you use alcohol to distract you from poker? Do you use poker to distract you from home? Do you use home to distract you from her? Do you use her to distract you from you? Do you use you to distract you from them? Do you use them to distract you from how everything is going wrong back at the business? Do you use the business to distract you from your diminishing creativity? Do you use your creativity to distract you from faith? Do you use faith to distract you from alcohol?
Did you see what i did there? Did you see how I went around in a full circle and came back to the beginning? Distraction often does. It often does just lead you around in a circle and back towards the beginning. That's the point. It's not supposed to take you off and away to somewhere else and leave you out there. It's meant to help avoid what's going on right here and right now - the track you are on - and then deposit you back to the beginning or the centre. The Distraction that I packed, was aimed specifically at the 12 hours of the round trip. I feared a void in stimulation and overcompensated accordingly. I clearly overcompensated, for aside from an hour or so with the iPod in my ears, I spent the other 11 hours intent, compelled and amused by a cause that, in essence, is the opposite of my distraction.
'Opposite of my Distraction'?? What is is that? I can't seem to find the perfect noun - a singular word that would have read far more lyrical than four.
It's strange, that a guy like me would be lost for 'words' in the plural, let alone lost for just one. Especially when this one word would describe what I most distract myself from. The word that represents what I use poker and writing and alcohol and drugs and walks across Manhattan and full days in the cinema and posting on this blog and Twitter updates and ill advised seductions and excessive work schedules and Hungarian cakes and afternoons in galleries and mornings on the Internet and evenings watching sports to distract me from. The track that I wish to be on; to be focusing on; to be maintaining and subsisting on. The track that I need, but, till now, haven't been able to force arrival upon. The track that is my Back to Mine. The track that is my Mine and I know it, but the one I can't seem to find The Word to describe.
Hang on - this is all bullshit. I can give you The Word. I just worked it out. Of course! It's there right in front of me. I was looking too far. Focusing on finding an elegant, prolonged and emotionally detached word. Focusing on language over substance. Focusing on everything but the centre of my track. I was doing this, exactly for the purposes of distraction. I sat down here at this computer, because I needed distraction today and if I spoke that word - The Word - and wrote it out to you, then I would have killed my distraction. I need the distraction today. I not sure why. Perhaps I wanted some perspective. Or something like that. I don't know. All I know, is that I needed to get away from 'The Word'. But now, instead, I sit here thinking only of The Word. And not just the letters, but the emotions and the flux and the flow and the desperations and the apologies and the mysteries and the joy and the laughter and the inspiration and the muse and the amuse and the fears and the nervousness and uncertainty and the hope and the future and the smile and that smile.
Damn. Look at all those words. They just lead me back to you. Words were meant to distract me today, but they just brought me right back to you.
Good job man. Your distraction just bought you back the full circle.
Maybe I need a new distraction.
Or maybe, just maybe, I should just write The Word.
