chair-moshing.

i'm so ready for the weekend. this week has been a combination of irritation, tedium, and sheer fakery, and i'm heartily tired with it. i'm not sure i have it in me to smile one more false smile.

normally i wouldn't be in charge of the place, but my boss came down with pneumonia this week, and as i'm the only other employee...

but tomorrow is the last of it, my friday, and a short day, too. once i turn off the lights, count the till, and lock the door, i am done...for two days, anyway. and hopefully, my boss will have made a full recovery by the start of the week.

i'd just veg away the weekend in a recovery of my own, but there's this person i'm meeting on monday...

so my only recourse is to plug in to the media player and turn it up to painful levels. close my eyes, let the music flood through me -- the guitars loud and rasping against my nerves, the singer growly and making me wanting to yell, the drums and bass taking over from my heart and pumping my blood through my body in new rhythms. at first, it only makes my head nod a little, makes my knee wiggle, but the energy builds, you know, it builds to an intolerable level.

time for a moshpit for one.

just like at a concert, i let the energy and the irritation and the anger and the joy bleed off into movement, wild maenad movement, bouncing in the chair, sight obscured by flying hair, hands in the air or hanging on to the wooden seat. this is nothing sexy, this is no choreographed flashdance, this is pure electric reaction to the music and the beat, this is dervish dancing alone and unseen in front of the computer, eyes closed, physicality overpowering the mind that can't shut off.

i have accidentally swallowed my hair, i have strained my neck, i have given myself headaches. i've read the news articles, i know i'm rattling my poor little brain in its box, but i don't care. i don't care, it's oblivion brought on by music and it's cheaper than alcohol and safer than street drugs.

tomorrow i'll smile again, and flatter, and make the ladies giggle while they buy fabric. tomorrow i'll worry, a little, about monday.

tonight, though i've gone nowhere, i flip the bird at them all, and dance.

t.k.o.

fiction infects me, it stays with me long after the book is closed. it always has.

after miss bennett, my thoughts are precise and clever; after earthsea, i sense the secret name behind every creature; after belldandy, i am graceful and step in time to the harmony of a music unheard; after the belljar, i am aware of the rot at my core; after the bard my slang circles around, witty and convoluted and archaic.

it's as if the accent of each sticks to me, sticks to my thoughts and my skill. i dare not write fiction of my own after dickens, he is deadly to my native style, and when i am particularly weak, p.j. wodehousesque acronyms crop up in my paragraphs like toadstool rings.

a writer must read, it is the other half of the practice, but if i am to write i must not read, or risk compromising my work. those books that i love, those stories i return to again and again, i have no willpower to resist them.

my favorite authors win every time.