Could this be the week when nothing comes to mind to write about? It’s Sunday afternoon and I am sitting here in the Lillian Smith Library at my second favourite spot to write — alas, The Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy room is not open on Sunday. Usually, when I make my way over here to the library, away from the temptations of procrastination I have honed so well at home, namely, playing Free Cell and doing laundry, I can come up with ideas and run with them. But today inspiration from all the tomes behind and around me just isn’t working. It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about different ideas for today but every time I started to write something, ideas just fizzled out after only a short paragraph of effort so I tossed the idea into the “Well, That Doesn’t Work” pile and started another.
One subject that I absolutely am not going to write about is the US Presidential Election — Will it ever be over? I’m afraid if I started putting down my thoughts about that I would end up banging my head on the table and shrieking loudly scaring the lovely young woman to my left reading a book in Chinese that must be very interesting because she hasn’t looked up since I sat down. I bet it’s a romance — maybe hot and heavy breathing and heaving chests. No, she doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it that much. It’s probably something uplifting or academic that she’ll use in her lectures tomorrow. I wish I could read over her shoulder but I can’t even figure out the direction the pages need to be turned let alone what any of the characters mean.
This library is really quite interesting on Sunday afternoons. It’s a haven for folks who don’t have anyplace else to hang out or don’t want to be in the place where they could hang out or, like me, driven out of the comfort of home in the name of being productive and getting some writing done. There are hundreds of folks here but it’s still very, very quiet except for the one guy on the other side of the floor who starts snoring as soon as he sits down and doesn’t stop until the bell sounds — in just about 20 minutes — giving all of us our 15 minute notice that the library is going to close.
I have been very productive today, really I have, but not in the writing sense. I got up at my usual god-awful early hour this morning to make my way up to the pool for aquafit. Now don’t get that little condescending smirk on your face and imagine all of us ladies (and some guys, too) prancing around to Abba songs with arms waving in the air above us. No way, this is serious exercising for 8:20 in the morning — well, actually for any time of the day. We are put through drills that take us from one end of the pool to the other, kicking legs and displacing great waves of water as we move back and forth. Then, just because the instructor thinks it would be fun — mind you she is on the deck watching all this — she tells us to balance our little bodies on very skinny noodles and move back and forth and up and down and not fall off. I count it a small step for Ann every time I’m able to stay on that blasted noodle for the entire exercise.
But no matter how hard that hour of exercise can be, it doesn’t compare to trying to write that first paragraph, let alone the next three or four, when the ideas just won’t come.
They just gave the warning that the library is closing in 30 minutes. The snorer has given out a snort and gone back to sleep until the final ding of the dong of the bell when they kick us all out of here. So, I’m declaring this blog finished. Now I’m going home to finish the laundry and maybe even cook a pot of soup.
Annie's Odyssey 