today a day of digging deep.  another year older and the time is running, i feel it running.  i did not know i could go this low inside, i feel like i’ve been rummaging in my guts today, i feel like i’m starting to work with something at the base of my skull.  writing with gritted teeth and blind stumbling and just grimly grimly putting words on page, one by one.

what a journey this has been, all in the space of my little head.  and it is nowhere near over.

a day too for snatches of song.  i have that hawthorn tree on the brain

Though that you do it is no boot,
Altho’ they cut me to the root,
Next year again I will be seen
To bud my branches fresh and green.

And you, fair maid, cannot do so,
For when your beauty once does go
Then will it never more be seen,
As I with my branches can grow green.

and this, too:

Why so green and lonely?
And lonely, and lonely
Heaven sent you to me
To me, to me
We are accidents
Waiting, waiting to happen
We are accidents
Waiting, waiting to happen

…

my love for the rrrrradiohead is deep and abiding.  there are some things in this world that inspire, as a kind of flash; there are other things, far fewer, that provoke an ongoing, purer kind of symbiosis.  a good dozen or so radiohead songs fall into the latter category.  it doesn’t matter whether i’ve heard one of them just a few times or a hundred times: i put it on and my prose will automatically go to a certain place, a certain kind of rhythm and texture.  i don’t know why it happens, or why it so consistently happens.  at this point it is perhaps one of the most well-worn tools in my kit . . . when i want a scene or a section or a story to sing, i scroll to the Rs in the library and press play.  and i am there.