Cursed With A Rich Inner Life
November 3rd, 2009
I’ve posted before on the problems of an overwrought imagination when flying. I suggested one checks the imagined disaster scenarios through with the baggage and enter the cabin in a clear and logical frame of mind.
That’s assuming you actually get on the flight.
I missed my flight home tonight. The first time I have missed a flight in my life. And what was I doing? What fascinated me so much that I missed five, yes, five calls for Phillipa Fioretti? Five times they called me and I was busy staring at the embossing on the scarlet and purple cover of The Book of Rapture and wondering if the title’s similarity to mine would cause a problem. And I just heard ‘gargle gargle come to gurgle gate blah’ – never connecting it with me because I don’t miss flights, I had plenty of time and I am on the ball.
After examining the book covers I sat down to write a few notes about humidity, sweat and my character – as you do. I leisurely wandered down to the departure gate where I discovered the flight was closed and had actually departed. Now this came as a shock. According to my ticket, and their schedule, they had flown off without me at least seven minutes too early and had they provided their usual lackadaisical service I should have been hanging around the departure lounge idly texting people for a spare hour or so. But I cannot evade responsibility - I was not as sharp as I could have been.
And I haven’t been since I started writing in 2006. I’ve been vague, distracted and preoccupied. I’ve made a myriad of mistakes in daily life from turning up at the theatre on the wrong night – three times (did I unconsciously not want to go or something?), walked into walls while deep in thought, bought the wrong items at the supermarket – that’s a regular one, left pots on the stove, forgotten to feed my dog and mislaid numerous important papers. But hey, I got a publishing contract. Isn’t that some sort of compensation for the descent into disorder?
You’d have to ask those around me but I suspect the answer would veer toward the negative some days. I’m not completely consumed by what I do but take me out of the daily routine while I’m chewing over a plot or a character and I’m likely to trip over something. It is a phenomenon that alarms me a little and I have to devise strategies for being in the present - other than smacking my brain around with strong coffee – because I won’t be giving up writing. A personal assistant, while providing an excellent solution, is extremely unlikely. I do have a complex system of Post It notes operating in my study and maybe, and if there had been some Post It’s dotted around the airport at strategic locations, just maybe I would never have missed my flight.
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Categories: culture, on writing | Tags: creativity, imagination, writing
3 Comments
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Do you ever open your fridge and wonder how the strange items got in there? Not just food items that don’t need refrigeration but other things like scissors and furniture polish? I suppose it’s good my subconscious likes to put things away… I have managed to teach it to focus on important things… like getting to venues early where 60 parents are waiting to drop 60 children off, etc. but housework hardly rates the necessity to Real-World-It.
I almost missed a flight in Spain… it took three calls before I connected the gargle about Dibblay from New Zealand with me! The words just hung in the air before my exhausted time-zone-challenged brain and it managed to decode it in a fit of panic!
I tend to put stray objects/foodstuffs in a cupboard - then I have the challenge of remembering which one. I found my iPod in there once.
Great stuff, Phillipa. R