1. Om Mani Padme Hum

Friends, my commute took me an hour this morning. Yes, because there was a quarter of an inch of snow on the ground. Silly, silly people who shouldn�t be licensed to ill, much less drive. So I had a lot of time, sitting in my car, warm, almost drowsy with a lazy calm that descends upon me anytime driving becomes even the slight bit onerous an activity. Because driving should not be stressful. You are basically sitting in a plush seat, radio and cigarettes close at hand, and exerting so little energy to propel the 5000 pounds of metal and plastic comfort that surround you that you should feel ashamed. The thing of it is, I completely squandered this time. In terms of thinking, I mean. Here is a transcript of ye old mental workings for a randomly selected 2-minute stretch this morning: Isn�t it odd that my sister described this woman in my office as looking like a puppet and it was so dead on in capturing her whole persona it was uncanny? What is the origin of the word �varmint�? Sometimes a person you see in another car looks like a person you know now will look when they are old. Did Steven King�s leg heal from that accident he had? Can I make papusas without a deep fryer? Is it stupid to dry clean a scarf, even though now that you saw it stretched out on the floor in the supermarket, every time you think to tie it around your neck you cringe? No. It is impossible not to start grinning to yourself when you recall the mail room guys� conversation from yesterday in your head in which the retort, �That�s what your momma said to me last night,� was used several times.

2. Die Gedanken sind fri

Obviously, I am not embellishing my little transcript there to impress you all. It was really a wasted hour. Cut to the meeting I just had at work where I was supposed to be listening, and nodding astutely, and jotting down notes and suddenly it was all about wildly creative thoughts, brilliant sentences and phrases begging to be written down RIGHT NOW, ideas to revisit the �Laughter in the Dark� screenplay, a thought about how to hit the hump in the last story�and even though I made a few scribbles it was neither the time nor the place to satisfy those urges completely. The meeting was a huge hand coming down to slap my brilliant artist alarm into snooze for an hour solid. After the meeting was over, I had tons of crap to �get to right away,� and now---I am sitting here, munching my lunch and wasting my time writing this uninspiring memoir, creative urges sapped completely. My timing is so off.