He got up earlier than everyone else. The cabin was silent. Too silent. The kind of silent that means you have to be just as silent. He had this issue, where if he had to be really silent, he invariably ended up dropping something or clanking something or stubbing his toe and blowing up the silence with sharp whispers about god and fornicaiton. This was going to be tough, but he was going to get out that door with some coffee, his computer, and something warm enough so he didn’t die of exposure in the mountains. Although dying would mean he wouldn’t have to write. He himself didn’t want to die, but he wished the part of him that wanted to write—had to write—would. What a fucking dream to not have to log every goddamn thought. That if you didn’t take the time to provide safe harbor for every fleeting synaptic ember, then everything would be OK. You wouldn’t slowly fry from the inside out like mental heartburn until you’re saying mean things to six year olds. The upside was that there was a completely safe and constructive solution to being a better person; the downside meant he had to summon the megatons of discipline from the very gods themselves and have Thor’s hammer nail him into place for long enough to put something on paper.
The whole time sitting there, every part of his electric soul—never more charged than when he needed to sit—pulling from one side to the other. He wondered if bystanders would be able to see his physicality change; warp, inflate, sink, bulb out like a squeezed water balloon while he rocked like Ray Charles to stay in that one place and just fucking write.
Sometimes, in his most errant selfishness, he thought that if the whole world finally went to war he’d be drafted and, well, fighting the good fight would mean he wouldn’t have to write. But that’s where he’d see it. This little light at the bottom of the medieval shit bucket of his brain. It’s luminescence floating around unto itself. Struggling to stay alight in the feces-flinging orgy of his everyday thought battles. He’d look down. Swim closer. Wipe the shit from his eyes, and see inside a picture of his family. He’d be in there, too. Frozen in a peaceful moment and, from the warm amulet, look back at the bile-stained shit swimmer peering in.
“Ok, I get it,” he’d mutter, the little light-up version of himself nodding back with eyebrows raised. As if to say, “Holy shit, do you finally fucking get it you thick slab of ass? And christ are you swimming in poop?”
Stunned by this innermost revelation, he’d crawl out of his bowels and emerge into the chilly morning of opportunity. Warm this day up. Write, motherfucker. Write. You’d probably just be a civilian casualty of WWIII anyway. And wouldn’t it be nice to at least have something for your wife and kids to read?
Somewhere in the echos of the blast radius of his self pity were the whispers of what to do next. They didn’t say anything about getting up to get another cup of coffee. They reminded him that longevity should really be called gevity with the goal of making it less short.