When I was a kid, visiting my grandparents in Hialeah, Florida was like going on vacation to a sauna.
Literally.
I could sit in a corner of the living room and sweat would bead all over my body. I didn’t know toes could sweat. Did you? This was a real discovery for me.
It tooks days and days to adapt to the heat and humidity, so I was treated to an oscillating fan at night so I could fall asleep.
It was an absolutely decadent sensual experience.
C’mon now, I was ten. The only other decadent sensual experience I had enjoyed was the sweet frozen goodness of a mamey milk shake. Both, I’ll point out, winners in contributing to relief from the interminable heat.
I just turned on the oscillating fan in my room and transported to the terrazzo-floored, jalousie-windowed guest bedroom in their home. I’m falling asleep even as I type.
My newest psychosis is listening over and over and over to the Caro Emerald song, “A Night Like This.” Really, I need an intervention.
It’s just the mood lifter I’ve needed this past week, and it is so catchy that I just put it on repeat and it is the perfect white noise for writing. I find myself clickety-clacking to the beat, but hey, it’s helping me write, so “hesh-yo-mouf” as they say around here.
It reminds me, of course, of all the ambient sounds that can really get in my head when I need to concentrate and I’ve managed to get into that zone, only to suddenly hear the hum of the lights. That’s probably the most annoying thing ever, to be so focused that a sound I wouldn’t ordinarily hear becomes a gigantic distraction. Thus, I play music that becomes so familiar I can tune it out.
I know people do it. I can name a few, but overall, it’s probably a tool that not many people admit to using. I mean, it looks pretty crazy to admit to listening to the same song for an hour straight and not be 16, mooning over an unrequited love, and wallowing in teen-aged angst.
Nope. I’m just happily getting some writing done. It’s nice to be able to finish this project that I’ve been working on in one manifestation or another for about a decade. It’s not that I’ve been writing for ten years, but that I needed to round out my experiences in order to finish it the way I am. That’s all you get for the moment. In actuality, this little baby is old enough to go to kindergarten now, so I figure I should just finish it, as in, stop writing and start editing.
That’s a bad word, by the way. If I love to write, I hate to edit. That’s why I have a stack of unfinished manuscripts. I hate to edit. Or maybe, the exercise was just writing the darn thing. It’s done and out of my system, why labor over finished business?
Because if I don’t finish the editing, no one will read my work. No one will swoop in and pay me obscene amounts of money to buy it from me. I won’t make millions of dollars. I won’t be able to have that beach house on the east coast of Florida. I won’t be able to get plastic surgery and look like Joan Rivers!
Hmmm. Breathe. And switch to a more calming song by Vivaldi.
As I was saying, if I don’t finish editing I won’t have a polished product that I can be proud of showing to people who may like to read my work. Yes. That’s a bit more normal-sounding.
