The Mean Reds

It's been awhile. I apologize for my silly little writing funks I so often find myself in. I hate them, I really do but they seem to be inevitable. Always lurking around my corner, ready to rain on my parade. One morning I wake up with a bright future intact & the next I have a serious case of the Mean Reds. If you're not familiar with this term it comes from one of my all time fav flicks Breakfast at Tiffany's from the superb character Holly Golightly.

Holly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?

Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?

Holly: No, the blues are because you are getting fat or maybe its been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

Well, yes Holly I do. I feel like I know it all too well. It's the worst of all of the funks because I don't have anything or anyone to blame. All I know is I feel like my life is surely coming to a close & I'll never be able to accomplish any of the things I had promised myself I would do. Every failure comes flooding into my mind and, what's worse, is I seem incapable of putting them on pages which is exactly where they belong. If they are on the pages they take root in a new home and out of my head. This way I can move on and the mean reds do not claim more than a few hours of my time. But this time that is unfortunately not the case. The mean reds have claimed a week now and I'm terribly sick of them. To try and get to the bottom of why I have them you would think I would lose myself in a novel, talk to loved ones or maybe even pray about it.. But no, I do something that Holly Golightly also puts best in one of her lines of the movie:

Holly: Promise me one thing: don't take me home till I'm drunk - very drunk indeed.

Yes, I hit the bottle... & I'm not so proudly saying I'm not what you would call an amateur either, I hit it quite hard. It's silly, really. Because I always end up in the same place. A week (sometimes more) goes by & I'm sifting through the blurred days & full throttled nights only to discover more pieces of myself that help complete a puzzle of a stagnant life. So what to do? Exactly what I am doing now.. sitting in front of this computer screen with a slight headache and a few mysterious bruises and attempt to paint the pieces of my puzzle with some different shades of hope. But where are these shades? They're inside. Though they may be chipped and faded, I can still feel them and that means I still have the chance. The chance to take control of that unsteady brush & paint the many masterpieces of life's desires.

Paul Varjak: You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified that somebody's going to put you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in a cage and you built it yourself. And it's everywhere you go. Because no matter where you run, you're always going to end up running into yourself.