12/26/12

The Creative Process

By: Lee Thomas Penn

-Son of-

Thomas Lee Penn

The Writer has a deadline in three days. He thinks about anthropomorphized political seagulls. He imagines a scenario in which The Scavenger Party opposes The Skimmer Party, which supports a new bill on bill regulation. The hero is Lucky, a one-legged glaucous-winged gull, who filibusters the new bill by reading a French translation of Moby-Dick.

The Writer writes a paragraph on these seagulls. The Writer chuckles. The Writer prints out the paragraph and tears it apart. He falls into a deep depression.

            The Writer seeks an addiction. All writers have an addiction. Alcohol? The Writer is not his father. Hard drugs? Too expensive (he is broke). Sex? Too wet. Other body-wet. Gambling? Perhaps. Dostoyevsky was a gambling man. But where? How? Won’t the development and gestation of an addiction take too much time? Doesn’t the Writer have a deadline in 65 hours?

The Writer watches his favorite pornographic video and takes a nap.

            The Writer takes a walk. He has 57 hours until his deadline. It is three in the morning. A policewoman asks what he is doing walking around at three in the morning, if he lives around here, if he is okay. The Writer responds in the affirmative to the last question, which he understands to refer to his physical state of his body and not to his wandering mind. He is thinking back and forth between the Hindu god Vishnu and the art of constructing hamburguesas colombianas (bun, pink sauce, yellow sauce, lettuce, pickles, tomato, then the meat patty, pink sauce, yellow sauce, crushed potato chips, melted cheese sauce, pink sauce, bun, press it down, tie it down with silver foil, provecho!). He wants to ask the policewoman about reincarnation and the statistical likelihood of having one’s soul inhabit a Colombian cow if, hypothetically, the newly deceased was a good person… But the Writer feels too self-conscious. Besides, the policewoman has just received a Code 904 on her radio and must go guard the scene of a house fire against heroic civilians, so she tells him to have a good walk and to go home soon: it can be dangerous at night, etc. The Writer walks home, a little edgy.

            “What is the word that I’m looking for? Is it ‘Rastafarian?’ ‘Margarita?’ ‘Reaganomics?’”

            “Santeria,” says the ghost of the Writer’s tenth grade World History class.

            “Santeria.”

            The Writer sits down to write. 44 hours to his deadline. He stares at the keyboard. He gets up and watches a program on the History Channel about the construction of pencils. He calls this “applicable research.”

            A Poem:

A golden tower

of pent-up sandwich power

set free from the fridge--

cold, dead--

to inseminate sweet bread

And to be buried in flaps

of turkey and Monterey Jack.

Oh, how the tower bends

to take tomato abuse

and drink deli juice!

Yes, how you love the knife’s pain!

Spread, you’re my little yellow stain.

And I hold the scepter!

I control the pumpernickel!

I slice the sultry pickle!

I twist your nipple with bleached knuckle,

Good Lord, I’m a condiment cuckold!

Whence this brown scab?

A Herpes sore: you whore! My word!

I left it exposed to fester in the fridge, uncured.

And now I will forgo the filthy mustard.

            The Writer, now a Poet, laughs at his creation, feels good. He calls his friends, asks if they want to play Texas Hold’em. He goes to the Broker’s house, greets the Broker’s wife – she’s doing well, is into yoga now – and sits down to play. His friends ask if he has written anything new. The Poet reads his new poem, and the friends laugh. They make crude jokes about sauces and buns. The Poet feels that they have missed the point of his poem, but he smiles anyway. The Poet loses $20 and goes home.

            The Writer sits in a café and drinks Earl Grey tea. 23 hours to his deadline. He is reading a copy of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, has been meaning to read Pygmalion for a while now, feels that, as a writer, he is obligated to read it. An attractive woman sits near him. The Writer thinks that it’s about time to shave his mangy beard. He imagines a conversation with the attractive woman in which they talk about German novelists and European affairs and dancing at nightclubs because, hey, the Writer is hip and can make this one concession to dance.

            The attractive woman looks at his book and says, “Hey! Isn’t that the guy who wrote 1984? I love that book!”

            The Writer broods darkly.

            “You will not finish,” says the ghost of the Writer’s self-confidence.

            “No, you are wrong,” says the Writer. “I will not sleep.”

            The Writer writes a short story about an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the first meeting of its kind in Haiti. The members, as it turns out, are all blood relations, and Big Brother runs the meeting. They discuss the overbearing weight of alcoholism. The youngest sister, a wild girl, suggests arson as a proactive solution to their addiction. They should burn down the local liquor store, which would eliminate the temptation to drink and bring them closer together as a family. Big Brother suppresses this idea. The story ends with a dangerous bonfire accelerated by spiced rum, wine, and malt liquor. The family feels good. Even Big Brother joins in the fun of the fire.

            The Writer is proud of his piece – he has been looking for a chance to express his views on the Nature/Nurture debate for some time now and thinks that he did a good job. He feels that his piece will catalyze social change. The readers appreciate the subtle use of sexual imagery in his descriptions of alcohol and alcoholism. The critics give it mixed reviews.