Going Up

I just finished a book called Freeing Your Creativity. Kinda sucked, kinda didn’t. This is surprising, as my life is usually divided between all-consuming love and wild hate. Ambivalence unsettles me. Must despise! Must adore! The book had some good ideas, but the writing in places was absolutely wretched, which makes you wonder about the author’s creds. I shall reserve judgment on whether to recommend him for instantaneous death.

I read a great deal of it over lunch hour in a Barnes & Noble. I was there by accident. I thought I had a therapy appointment, and showed up at the Waiting Room of the Damned, the entirety of which overheard the secretary gently inform me that I did not, in fact, have a session that day because my therapist is currently something like eighteen states away from here. I am assuming this has nothing to do with me.

Well. There was no way I was returning to the general vicinity of the Evil Boring Day Job, so I ran away to the books. I found a little table, slammed my purse down so as create the appearance that I had some Very Important Business to attend to, and sat there next to the escalator rushing through the good ideas and the wretched writing.

An interesting experience, reading by an escalator, this constant advancement of duplication. The belts churn a cycle of unending repeat, always moving but in effect going nowhere. Exactly like my writing career. I stared down at the book and saw the bottom halves of the world going by—- blue jeans, loafers, flowered skirts.

Smack in the middle of Chapter Ten I found a due date receipt from the last person who had checked out the book. It was due on the first of November, 2001—when this had last left the library, the world still thrumming from the shock of 9/11, my nephew was a separate sperm and egg, and I was in Ohio on the final lap of my Master’s degree.

Here is what else was on the due slip:

Evolution: The Triumph of An Idea

Poem-Making: Ways to Begin Writing Poetry

History of Art For Young People

I need to call this person. A nascent writer, that much is clear—but a poet, so clearly not somebody currently making a living of it. Art history? For young people? YEAH! Kids love Botticelli!

What really intrigues me is the book on evolution. A fascinating addition, and something the checkee had to go out of his way to grab off the shelf. I want to know what’s going on there. “Okay, I need to get a book on how to rhyme, and one to teach my four-year-old about the pre-Raphaelite movement, and also a semi-crappy creativity sparker, and—oh, on my way out, I need to check out this whole monkey-to-man business I’ve been hearing so much about."

This, of course, is coming from a person whose checkout slip contains, in addition to the worryingly ambivalence-creating Freeing Your Creativity, the books Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module and Wild About Horses: Our Timeless Passion for the Horse. Seriously, what’s the deal with this psycho?