deeplyshallow // do not disturb

do not disturb

Tonight I am in San Francisco, at the end of the first of two days here in the city, working on-site with one of my clients and a couple of my coworkers to plan our attack on a new project. The working session ended early, leading us back to our very nice hotel for a couple of hours of more work and preparation for tomorrow’s meeting, and was followed by a rich dinner at a nondescript bar and bistro here on Fourth Street.

At the end of this day I am alone in my small (but very nice) hotel room, sitting in an orange striped chair beside a window, through which I can look down five stories on Fourth Street, and San Francisco’s Apple store, and I think a Macy’s, and some other large building sheathed in white rippling plastic. This white monstrosity is right next to something called the Flood Building and a smaller building with a big red sign that reads Shoe Pavilion.

I don’t much like San Francisco. But this room is nice enough, and all I can hear is the low hum of traffic below, and the white noise of the air pushing through the narrow vents overhead, and a thin saxophone somewhere down the street. It could be an old movie from the room next door, but I don’t think so.

I am stretching here, writing here, warming my fingers for what I hope will be a very productive night of work on Eleanor. The weekend was mine for this same purpose, alone while Felicia was commandeering the Starbucks she now manages in a small town just up the coast from San Luis Obispo.

So on Saturday I took a long walk (and sometimes sprint, sometimes jog) on the beach north of Morro Rock, and let my mind wander over my story like a blind person’s fingertips over a familiar surface, and what I came up with was a way to execute an idea that I’ve been stewing on for a month or more. I’d walked half a mile by this point, and the beach became a fascinating place. The seagulls performed for me, swooping high and steep only to stall and drop locktight clamshells onto the beach from thirty or forty feet, then diving to investigate the results. Brown stoopshouldered gulls stomped around on the wet sand and picked at the squishy carcasses of jellyfish. And then I came across what looked like a dead seal. It was a heavy lump on the shore, just up the beach from the wash of the tide, lying still with a rip of red across its back. I circled around it, and it stirred, and looked up at me with big wet eyes, and then lay its head on the sand again. The sand beneath its head was smoothed in an arc, as if it had been sweeping big snow angels with its chin. I walked closer and it watched me. I walked closer, and it lifted its head and roared rather weakly in my direction. I was carrying my BlackBerry because it has a voice recorder, and I had been dictating my ideas for the book. I called Fish and Game, who never answered; I called the police department, who suggested Marine and Mammal; I called Marine and Mammal, who over the course of four phone calls finally questioned me and promised to send somebody out.

By the time I finished my beach excursion, the writing bug had flown away, and at home, everything distracted me: the cats, chattering through the window screens at the birds on the fenceposts and telephone wires; the birds, squawking teasingly back at the cats. The big blank TV screen irritated me, so I watched some baseball to ease my mind. I did some situps. That helped, a little, so I did a lot more. I played some video games. I sat to write several times and nothing clicked.

On Sunday I felt calm and the cats were sleeping and the birds were still and the vast distractions of Halo and the Minnesota Twins had eased, so I sat to write, and I wrote three sentences before deleting them and rewriting them six more times and then deleting them and pronouncing everything I had written completely stupid and quitting in disgust.

So here I sit, in my hotel room, planning to write. Planning. Rather than doing.

The big white Hefty building is distracting. The street lamps — too grapefruit-colored for my tastes — reflect on the shiny white plastic and have lit my dark room in pale pink tones. For some reason the refrigerator that is tucked into the TV cabinet here keeps humming and buzzing, and then snapping off audibly, with a suspicious flash of light that leaks from behind the heavy cabinet like orange lightning. This room may set itself on fire tonight, but it probably won’t be because my writing is fast and furious and sending up sparks.

There isn’t much left to write about without getting to work on the book, so I’ll end with this: Last week Felicia and I were strolling around downtown San Luis. We passed under a big tree that. Leaves were tumbling down. Acorns dropped. Something struck the rim of my glasses and sprayed chunkily over the lenses and finished in a goopy blob on my shirt. I stopped. At first I thought I’d been spit on. I looked down at the gunk on my shirt and saw tiny seeds in it. Bird shit. The look on my face, I think, was one of complete defeat. Felicia looked up at me in sad surprise, then said, Wait here, and dashed into the restaurant where we’d eaten earlier that afternoon. I stood there, facing the passing cars so that nobody would notice the bird shit that, I now realized, was not only on my glasses and shirt, but streaked across my cheek as well. Felicia came back and carefully dabbed away the mess, and I looked down and saw her eyes filling up, and I asked what was wrong and she said, You just looked so sad. She tried to blink back tears. When she was done I felt better, and she threw away the napkins, and we walked to the corner and waited for the light. I looked down at her and said, I’m alright. Are you? And she said, I wanted to cut that tree down and kill all of the birds for you.

That was a wonderful day.

Later, now. I have a story to write.

Next-morning update: Something about a good hotel room. I can always write in a hotel room. 2,300 words last night and this morning. Today’s going to be a pretty good day.