...The Right to Write - Exercise...

Initiation Tool - create "Morning Pages", writing 3 pages longhand every morning (90 days straight)

Fri. Aug. 20, 2010 - "Morning Pages" - Day #10 - Park Slope Cocoa Bar @ 9ish AM

I can picture myself in this cafe. I have an extraordinary ability to picture myself in places that I am presently in. I can also picture myself in this cafe because to the left of my seat a mirror has an extraordinarily good looking man staring at me that suprisingly resembles that freckled man that lost his glow stick that I'm writing about in my next novel (novella?) (Look up meaning of that word at later date).

I often see others not at a job during the day and ask why aren't these people working?...asking this while unemployed...oh, the irony of unemployment...is that irony?...the irony of using the word irony when it's not called for...Anyways, a guy just entered the cafe. And, yes, he is that guy. The guy that approaches looking like he might join you, oh how I love that guy. I wear a t-shirt every time I go to a cafe that I think's going to be crowded. It says, "Don't worry, I won't join you." And on the back it says, "But watch your back"...the guy didn't join me...I reverse the T-shirt as soon as I get a seat...

"Man, do I need a tan," the man in the mirror asked? Yeah, that was a question, not me reflecting that I've just discovered that I'm an extraordinarily pasty fellow. That I am, but did not just discover, and to answer the man in the mirror's question, well, no, you don't need a tan. I'd like a cookie this cafe has in jars right next to the cash register, but I don't need one - but am going to get one later - because like Seinfeld said, "Being an adult is having a cookie when you want." And I think I'm thinking along those lines. Being an adult (add-ult? People that pronounce it that-a-way shall be locked up, or shipped to Starbucksland, a reference from other "Morning Pages")...being an adult is also realizing you don't need a tan. period. Of course I'd like one. One tan? Is that the proper way to refer to tans? Like the - I'd like one, as in, a cookie. Would you like a tan? Yeah, I'd like one? But, apparently adulthood has set in for me because I've graduated to the realization that whether I'd like one (a tan) or not, I'm not going to get one. So, me and my revelation will sit quietly with a cookie, go on with our day, while others waste theirs wishing for things unattainable (like a freckled man's tan, he'd rather have his glow stick back anyways). At points in my life I felt like Pecola, the black girl in Tony Morrison's Bluest Eye. All she wanted was blue eyes. And I say black - because she's black, or was. I'm not sure if these novel characters live on. But, with or without a tan, I will live on, extraordinarily pasty. That dude in the mirror certainly needs a tan though. Time for that cookie.

...

Reading the news:

"I couldn't have done this without my teammates, " said Tiger Woods Thursday night at his press conference, his first public appearance after the famed-Thanksgiving incident, changing Tiger's world forever. He repeated, "I couldn't have done this without my teammates," as his mother sits front row, dumbfounded how her little boy got to this point - the press dumbfounded, teammates?...

...

Back to that cafe. I can picture myself coming to this cafe, sleep deprived enough to think this writing will actually lead somewhere. Maybe that's what it takes anyways, a little disconnect from the supposed rational thinking most believe they have...picture myself coming to this cafe everyday and writing. It's got all the fixtures. Over priced coffee. Dunkin' Donuts 2.25, here 2.85 - but I convince myself if I'm paying extra, I must be doing something, creating something extraordinary - for who else is waking up, traveling to different places daily and writing "Morning Pages"? Not many, and that has nothing to do with others having jobs, I agree man in the mirror.

Bottles of wine - which reminds me that, yes, I am an adult if I'm surrounded by wine, and reminds me that this is no ordinary cafe, it's extraordinary and labeled a bar, a coffee bar, or specifically The Cocoa Bar in Park Slope Brooklyn. My ice coffee's ice has melted resulting in extra ice coffee - sweat!...Bookshelves with books, I refuse to list which ones, that absolutely nobody reads, but it gives customers, like the wine, a sense of sophistication, a word I often have trouble spelling and am proud of it...gives customers a sense of sophistication that I mock, but also fall into thinking I'm a part of because I've got the coffee, the proper surroundings, with my Ipod on, novel to the side next to my Moleskine that all the legends used, they didn't?

I can picture 50 years down the road, I'm long gone, but another extraordinarily pasty fellow walks into this cafe (fucking shit man, it's a bar and these bottles of wine are making me want to drink, get drunk, at 10 in the morning!)...this pasty fellow sits down, looks to the left and sees that man in the mirror who's extraordinarily pasty as well, but he's entered adulthood, doesn't care about tanning anymore, unpacks his Northface (still around), places novel aside along with his Moleskine, his thought-dreams convince (not really, but writes that he is, reverse psychology?) him that he has extraordinary ideas in the Moleskine that nobody gets, but when his time has come and past they will be understood. He sits, writes, sips ice coffee, ordered cookie in advanced unlike me because he's truly adult and ordered it right-a-way instead of reciting Seinfeld, he's living that philosophy. His ice coffee's long finished, but the ice melted and resulted in extra ice coffee. He's on his last day of the 90 day "Morning Pages" exercise and realizes there is nothing extraordinary about the writing process. A pen, a pad. You can surround yourself with all these fixtures, but only doing it, and that's writing, will do it. Which reminds me, this is the cafe that I, I mean that pasty man in the mirror, said he came to before he substitute taught at the school across the street - the school where he told seniors in high school that were running around the classroom playing tag, "Stop acting 3 and sit the fuck down".