The journal page, opened up again to the same spot, was empty. As it had been yesterday and the day before and the day before that. Frustration continued to daunt him.
Humphrey Talbott sat in A Clean Well-Lighted Place Books with his journal, pondering his various projects and sipping a cup of coffee, when he looked up and took it all in–
all the books that were on display in the clean, sun-drenched room,
the airy feelings that the proprietors effortless put out for the comfort and delight of their customers,
the collective sense of accomplishment in all those books and th eproducts to be appraised, held and evaluated with keen and loving attention,
and he felt a lot of feelings–
a bit of inspiration, to be sure–all these were creations out of nothing after all, so individual authors’ achievements deserved that recognition,
and not a little bit of feeling daunted, for how could whatever creations coming through the physical vehicle of this brain, these nerves and synapses connecting all the way down to these wiry tan hands compare with the works herein collected.
But mostly
he felt envy.
The beast which everyone else knew to be a green-eyed monster, the once-heavy, now HWP stand-in for a non-crucified Jesus at 47 experienced the state of comparing what he had against others and finding himself wanting as a southern belle not unlike Scarlett O’Hara. He named the bitch Envy LaRougemort, Dee-Lightful Drag Queen Vampire with a Dixie-down drawl, she do declare!
She could outcunt Rush Limbaugh!
(Humphrey liked to use the c-word in his own style, and he fantasized redefining the word as follows: “cunt: (pronunciation thereof), n. vul. 1. Vampire (onom., synec.) 2. vul. female, wnech. 3. vul. vagina. v. vul. to bite, as if from a vampire. “Count Dracula cunted his fangs into Lucy’s neck and inhaled the red elixir of her living body into his undead gullet.”)
Needless to say, most times he kept this redefinition to himself in his little witch cottage by the river. It was indeed a most powerful notion to attempt to add to the mix of confusion over a sound with a lot of dismay and disinfomrative associations already toward what he considered a more appropriate use of the sound of that particular epithet. Such a waste when it comes out of a drunk fellow cussing out his enabling wife and female relatives–come on, it so suits Dick Cheney does it not?
That face defines the word that rhymes with “bunt,” and don’t go too far from the letter b to figure out what the former V.P.’s true essence by sound is captured.
“Yet this would most likely remain a secret unto the grave, Ah do declare.” Oh, he could hear Envy’s gruff evil-cank drawl as it surveyed the room.
“Why I do surmise Humphrey James Talbott, that it’s nice that you’re here and all, enjyoing the lovely summer’s day in this dee-lightful bookstore in the town you dream of moving to someday; yes it is just the loveliest! But honey, don’t ya think you ought to be looking for some real work? Like maybe seeking temp jobs in that gloriously gritty and hideous vEmpire you do go on about? As it crashes and burns to be sure, but still there is money to be made and Esq-cunts to satisfy with your fast typing hands and your yummy suicidal doe-in-the-headlights rage. Don’t you think it’s time you just settled into it, got that rifle and the new gig, then went postal on some LLP that deserves it? Hm, sugar-sugar, honey-honey? I mean, can you really compete with these illustrious writers? I see your name in the history books as a rager not a writer.”
Envy LaRougemort could really come in and bring out the dreadful feelings of uselessness, as if the journal he held wasn’t made of college-ruled but toilet paper. Envy had her ways, sometimes pretending to be an advocate (“why it’s all about who they know, really!”) and other times encouraging a foray into credit card usage (“you deserve that pumpkin spice candle”). This mass murderer thing was new for her. And pretty low. His 401k was getting dismally low, and he was doing his best to keep fear at the door. But it got harder with each passing day and Envy didn’t make it easier.
He had just had a dreadful conversation with his best friend Allen Tighner, who had gone through something similar with his own journey. And the difficulties of that part of his friend’s journey were still so raw and vivid, that Humphrey’s issues just shut him down right away. Humphrey felt awful that he had stepped toward this with his friend and felt a pang of regret, and not a little extra pain in his heart for having caused his long-time pal a two-fer punch. It only made the writer’s block he was experiencing that much more difficult to endure.
And while Humphey would love nothing better than to join the ranks of writers who sent in a hard-hitting and entertaining query letter that started a bidding war that landed him a 6-figure contract, or to start a franchise that would knock it out of the park, he knew he’d be satisifed if he were considered the next Lance Drakeson or Kim Velasquez-Tierney. A new writer in his late 40s who had left behind a corporate gig and went his own way. He followed these role models’ epxeriences avidly, as they were both like him–“Friends of Terry.” He had heard Lance and Kim share on the phone lines for Fulfillment Anorexics Anonmyous meetings, and found himself alternating between being inspired and depressed by them.
Yes, yes, of course he wanted to be famous, to have his work recognized. Yes of course he’d love to see his books and plays “filed under T” and attracting the readers he knew were out there to connect with. Humphrey suspected there were intrepid actors out there who would fight passionately to get his plays onstage, literary managers and dramaturgs and artistic directors be damned! But here he was, in Harvard Center, New York, sitting in a thoughtfully appointed bookstore along the Rijkskill in Washington County, Grandma Moses country, in a plush and comfy chair staring at a blank page in a spiral notebook blocked and dismally envious with Envy LaRougemort’s fierce, cold stalactite voice drilling its deathly notions his way.
But the clock was ticking, and Envy just bided her evil time. Was it a set-up for failure that he didn’t believe that his 401k would survive to see his retirement days, that whatever was going on with the Mayan calendar and ancient prophecies would scotch the idea of a cushy elderhood easily? Actually, if he didn’t take it when he did, it wouldn’t have mattered much. He was headed for a suicide if he continued working in the necronomy’s legal-eagle bowels. If nothing else, taking the 401k was forestalling his own demise by however long it lasted.
Almost a year exactly before it was gone gone GONE. It was coming to the end of 10 months ago when he had given noticed at Windigo Windigo Mankiller LLP (not its real name) on Cockson Street in Albany. He figured he had about 6 weeks of money left, with 2 months rent good and then…? He’d have to do something else, though he was leaving it of course to the last minute.
He knew other things as well. Humphrey was also a witch and felt on some level he’d be all right. Something eventually would come through his pen, and it would be marvelous and magical. Or something would manifest through his intentions and workings that would far exceed his wildest dreams. It would arise from his heart and its wisdom, and it would truly be miraculous and effortless.
And yet was it turning out that way? Was it not an effort to drive all the way up from his domicile in Doodleville, day after day, just trying to contrive some sort of text out of a parched imagination? The torture he felt of showing up to characters and works that did not grab him, but which he felt compelled to write nonetheless. And they stayed away in droves.
Who else was going to tell these stories if not him?
And he knew he had to try and write in a medium he didn’t find comfortable. Screenplays, with their rigid 3-act structure. But his idea for the Doin’ Damage Quartet was totally cinematic, and the first story, about a British-born attorney, now paralegal, who is in a dead-end vEmpire gig and married to a high-maintenance local t.v. producer, can’t go on anymore and he leaves his job when he discovers he’s a plant whisperer. And with their help, he’s able to intervene to keep some pristine land being soiled by the hydrofrackers out to continue their sorcerer’s apprentice ways. He had gotten through a second draft on that one, and was trying to write the next, a horror movie with the monster being the way we live our lives. That one wasn’t going so well.
He wondered if he’d be able to sell the first script to the fellow who he had in mind as he wrote it, a British rock-star in his own right. Caw, the former front man of Liv-P-D, and who had embarked on his own solo career, was someone Humphrye respected in his shamanic work. They had met in the astral through the auspices of Tlatzolteotl and the Blue God. The beautiful Aztec filth goddess and Dian-y-Glas had connected them both one day as they walked simultaneous labyrinths 2,000 miles apart. Humphrey had rounded the 3rd circuit when he spied the recognizable personage leaning up against the wall, pondering some message. Humphrey had interrupted the reverie.
Caw had screeched at him and flapped his skinny arms–“Who the fuck are you? How’d you get in here? Oh. You’re ghostly. Oh. Huh.” The sweet-smelling goddess stood nearby and radiated love their way as Humphrey stood bewildered to see an honest-to-god celebrity right there in front of him. The goddess spoke:
“Caw, who is also known as Colin Andrew Wimberley, and Humphrey James Talbott also known as Ice Eagle, you two will one day work together on several projects.”
“Like hell, I’m working with numbnuts here! I don’t care who you are!”
And Tlatzolteotl smiled at Caw and feces vomited forth from his gullet. And Humphrey found his own voice.
“Oh, that’s attractive. Shitbreather, I simply must have him now. Caw that was too sexy for Coco Chanel herself. She should only spew such cocoa.” The Britpunk star wiped his soiled astral mouth with a plasmatic towel that appeared out of thin air for the express purpose, he nodded grudgingly at Ice Eagle Humphrey, and grimly smiled.
“As I was saying,” the filth goddess continued, “you two shall work together, for it has been preordained and you two contracted it pre-existence. I intervene to put you both on notice for it is important that the work proceed. Ice Eagle, you will know the appropriate time to begin the work. Sorrow shall herald it, I’m afraid, but a floral brilliance will initiate you and your journey will commence.”
Humphrey stammered. “It’s — not–is it a rock musical, maybe? Is it lyrics from your work or –”
“Never! I only write my own material, and so it will have to be a novel or a screenplay for my acting side. That’s all there is to it.”
Ice Eagle – Humphtrey Talbott always got a kick out of his magickal name — lookeda t Caw dubiouslyu. But he shrugged his shoulders in whatever, and looked back at the goddess who had been joined by the Blue God. The goddess had also turned into a gorgeously radiant male figure for some odd reason.
Dian-y-Glas said, “Yes love. There will be much reward for this work. And you will know it well. But it won’t happen for awhile, and even when you commence, you shall have doubts. Rest assured that Caw here will come to your aid when the time requires it.”
When the time requires it, eh? Humphrey mused to himself in the bookstore, tiring of willing some movement of his hand on the overwatched page in front of him. The script he had already started needed more work. He was sure his protagonist was too much of a sketch. To make the fellow more real and therefore a desired role, he had imagined Sandy Stierer in the role, because he was so damn likable. That also kept him from being Dr. E. Vil-Parodyville. Really, the world was full of misguided and well-meaning people who wanted to keep things as they are, as destructive and delusionally exclusionary as they were. The same people with their heads narrowly blinkered to believe that their way of life really was non-negotiable.
Like his ex, Tommy Laidlaw for one, and who of course was the basis for the protagonist’s high-maintenance wife. Which Humphrey decided to write for Caw’s wife Letty Dyer, who was an actress in her own right.
They had broken up just prior to when Humphrey had hit his own wall at WWM. THeir breakup was part of the prophesied sorrow he had endured. The first version of the script was a play, but then after a reading of it with local actors, he had decided it needed to be a screenplay, and that it also needed to be a quartet of scripts on top of it. He had experienced a burgeoning of material over the winter, even as he overcame cold after cold after cold during the dreadful winter when they had received more snow than anyone could remember.
They still loved each other, he was convinced. But he also felt it wasn’t a good match in terms of a union. The two just didn’t have a strong enough relationship so that they could gay-marry. Their values were just too different. And he could start going down that path, with all the various things that had led up to last Lammas when Tommy had announced the relationship was done. And Humphrey agreed. And then after Tommy left, he called his best friend Allen, and said “We broke up,” and fell to a heap on the floor, heaving like he’d never ever heaved before.
But that was last August. This was a year later, and September was just around the corner. And all these thoughts and none of them in particular were swirling around Humphrey’s brain as he tore his eyes from his non-writing and looked out at the room, desperate for some inspiration. This was such a lovely bookstore, and he had told the proprietor how much he preferred it to some of the other independents out there. A Clean Well-Lighted Place was a great name for it too. Leanne had been solicitous of Humphrey, noting that he had brought his journal, and that for the past week he had just sat there immobile for 2 hours each day in the hot sun. While she felt a sort of concern for him, she was more than happy to help the various customers who came in and shot the breeze or who had a specific book they sought out.
Today, she was helping a mother with her two kids deciding on which of two books on insects they should buy, with one child insistent on the more expensive one while the other child was more interested in the slinkies. The girl held the one book she liked up before her like a flash card of a blue butterfly dancing around, as the other girl set up a little staircase of books to play with the pink slinky in her palm.
It all seemed like some sort of– well, that’s silly, Humphrey thought to himself as he smiled quizzically and looked elsewhere.
He could feel something was up, a budding need to take some actions that would hopefully expand his life. What those actions were, he couldn’t say yet. Harvard Center had something to do with it. Books had something to offer.
He took a last swig of his coffee and made the decision to beg off for the day. Muse, Fetch and Heart were all saying something in their absence, so he decided he’d get a move on. He put the cap on his pen, inserted it into the rings fo the spiral binder and shut the notebook with pen marking the infernal place that hadn’t budged for 8 days now. Till next time. He stood up, stretched and took his empty paper coffee cup to Leanne, who would toss it in the trash can behind the cashier’s desk. And he walked outside into the bright sunlight.
Cerridwen's Mountain 