(Nottingham-famous, Tom Jepson, has laid out a challenge to create content, daily, for the month of December. This is day four. #Dec19ContentChallenge )
The thing about writing every day is that your find yourself with the freedom to string together any set of letters into a “written” blob and call it a day. There’s a level of dropped quality that is accepted by your inner self-critic, who seems to be scrutinizing this regular release of trash with lesser standards than the perfect Trash written after eons. More so, readers’ opinions take the back seat in this situation and that, I hope, you now understand, why.
Thus, I’ve been idly thinking what face I would stick on today’s Trash whilst hurriedly eating a sandwich with a name that I could not pronounce, much less spell. “It had some chicken in it and just enough tomato sauce”, is best I can describe it to you. I pondered on lots of things. This isn’t new. As a poet, that’s at least 90% of the writing process; eating and thinking.
My thinking face must have been noticed by one of the 9 members of an ambulance crew that were sat opposite my table. They moved away by the time I got to write and rewrite the above sentences, 4 times. I get my English tenses wrong all the time. Switching between past and present, it’s obvious my words are making up their mind about settling, too.
Mrs. A, my high school English teacher, would never believe that I was struggling. She would remind me to revisit what I’ve always known, that “language is rigid” or “a reflection” or some wise shit like that.
And you know what? I’ve never seen an ambulance crew sat down on a table together sharing food and maybe, stories. Is that odd? In my head, they are never outside their emergency vans, forever in a state of saving somebody, constantly. I would be lying if I didn’t imagine them rushing out right now to a place that needed them, oblivious to the fact that I had put into permanence their pause.
Until next time.
-7:28PM