Writers, Time, Writing and Freelance Writing

The Problem for Writers Who are Freelance Writing:

It is raining outside, and all I feel like doing is walking the streets of Zagreb, like a Woddy Allan movie, with melancholic jazz ring in my ears. And after the walk, I get back home, remove my jacket, and write one honest sentence as I smoke a cigarillo.

I don't know what it is that I want to write about, but I can feel it linger within, caged behind my ribs like an innocent prisoner, freshly jailed, still thinking they've got a chance to freedom. How naive those newbies are, holding tight to false hopes. It is only after 30 years, after all those pseudo lights casting pseudo shadows are stamped down by father time does one get to hang on to those soft heartbeats that tick with the clock. Each tick is a subtle shimmer of a ray that casts no shadows, but the wait is long and treacherous.

I realized that my daughter's bike was out in the rain. I stepped out to bring it back in, stopped on the way to smoke a cigarette, and stood to watch it all poor down. Melancholic jazz on a rainy day is no breeze to listen to. It stabs the aching heart, but still, the heart goes on and so does the music.

My air sacks are beginning to get weighed down by the nicotine stains that line its walls. The choughs, the coffees, and the heavy grey clouds, I stood outside searching for the next sentence to form itself. I saw a sentence in the sprays of the downpour, a sentence on the splatters in the puddles, a sentence on a lonely car stabbing through the rain, a sentence on the old lover in solitude under her yellow umbrella, a sentence on the washed green leaves of the autumn trees. I nodded in approval and patted myself on the back, for what a good writer I was.

The last puff and a cough later, I brought back her little tricycle. On its handle hung a pair of my underwear that was left to dry, now wet. I picked it up; holes in the groin. Poverty is a darkly comic, it sneaks up on you, and all there is to show for it is holes in your underwear.

I came back and sat on my computer to write again. What do I write about? I know what it is, it is that one sentence that has never been written before. That one thought that has not entered the minds of the greats, the delinquents, the bums, the druggies, the drunk philosophers, and most definitely, my own.

I sit here with the hopes of the thought coming out on this white screen, like the mother of that naive prisoner. I believe in the innocence of that thought, and I pray, I pray as I write, and I pray every day that my child is freed. But, can this prayer last another 30 years?

I don't have the luxury of time to sit and wait for that line to appear. Maybe it already has, or maybe it never will, but, right now I have to put all this aside and get back to work.

The luxury of time is the prize for winning a great war. The odds are stacked up against the chance for a victory but the will seems to want to squeeze out that one honest line like a silent fart, holding on to the false hope that it would smell of the beautiful food it has never eaten. But the odds seem greater than my will, for, I need a new pair of underwear.

I have to bid goodbye, for now; I need to follow up on a few clients and get paid. I probably am going to go for that walk after, hope it doesn't stop raining. Time for another cigarette.

Kahan J Sudev