A friend of mine posted a brief video of Stephen Spielberg on her Facebook page, and normally I avoid such interview-y vids because I really don’t care what so-and-so has to say.  I don’t know who he is, and opinions are like assholes:  everyone’s got one.  I’m tired of being inundated with opinions and images and sounds, unless it’s raucous music, and even then I need earplugs as a filter.  God, it’s such a hassle, getting old.

Stephen Spielberg, though–I’ve grown up with him.  I watched the “first” Star Wars flick when I was 13, and have loved nearly all of his movies since that first intro.  ( A few exceptions, one disgustingly notable: A.I. Seriously. He should have left that film alone. It would have been perfect had it ended with the little robot-boy at the bottom of the sea asking the statue if it was his mother.)   I forgive him, though, and will continue to do so because I love his vision.

So I figured I could sacrifice 59 seconds to him.  He could have something interesting to say.

“…listen to yourself,” he says. “When people don’t listen, it’s not that they don’t learn, they just deny themselves tremendous opportunities and glorious choices.  They deny themselves this, and it’s their own damned fault.”

He said this with a sort of exasperated conviction, like he keeps having to say these same words over and over to people who have no ears.  That –helplessness, the underlying sadness in his voice, I heard that.

I heard, if you listen to yourself, you can create your art with as much joy and success as I do mine.

I’ve been feeling stuck — creatively, artistically, writerly.  Stuck, unmotivated, and uninspired.  This, despite the fact that crap keeps happening—and I mean GOOD crap.  I just call it crap because it’s been overwhelming, and when there’s an avalanche, it doesn’t matter if it’s snow or dung—you’re gonna get buried.  Right?

argh. Wrong. That’s a terrible attitude, and I know it.  So for the past two days I’ve been noodling about the fact that I feel like I’m drowning despite the facts that:

• I have an agent patiently waiting to read 100 pages of my first book;
• I have two Sonnet explications about to go to publication for Facts on File;
• I have been offered the chance to teach two college classes;
• I have been teaching security guards basic verbal self-defense, report-writing, and  how to interview witnesses.

All of this has evolved since mid-September, and it’s all amazingly, stupendously good.  Yet I feel stuck.  And I feel like I’m missing something crucial, which, of course, I am.
I’m not writing.

So I have this slithery insistent feeling under my skin that will continue to get slitherier until I obey.  (Then it will subside into a bright shimmer under my skin that doesn’t  make me want to stomp but leap.  Ahhh, writing.