I don't know what I'm going to say

I've gone completely dry.  Devoid of ideas.  Hopefully temporary.  It usually is.  

I seem to keep waking up around 5 a.m., well before the alarm goes off.    I guess I trained myself to do that so I could come up into the studio for some creative time before the regular day begins.  But the last couple of days I come up to the studio and sit in the chair like Rodin's Thinker...pretending to be pensive and thoughtful but actually possessing a brain of marble.  And I probably weigh more.  Maybe not.  The Thinker is stone, after all.  But I probably look like I weigh more. 

But I've got nothing to say.  No pictures to print.  No snap in the synapses.

So maybe I should take my own advice.  I'm pretty good at giving advice, maybe I might practice what I preach.  (Sometimes I dislike overused phrases like the plague.)  Or walk the walk.  Walk the talk?  Walk on a balk.  What, exactly is a balk anyway?   Maybe my mind is balking at being harnessed this morning.  But, I mean in baseball...I've never figured out exactly what the pitcher does or doesn't do that suddenly makes umpires run out waving baserunners around and coaches streaming out to scream at the umps.   It's a hesitation of some kind (or lack of hesitation) and has something to do with planting the foot.  That's all right, I also get confused by illegal formations in football.  And I don't understand cricket or rugby at all.  

Where was I.   Oh yes...following my own advice about writer's block.  Which is, "Just sit down and write anything.."    It is kind of like jump starting a car.   Fingers move on keyboard creating a kind of external energy and words appear on the screen and my mind, despite its balkiness, looks at the words and is forced to try and make sense of them. 

And sometimes I try and wake up Butler and Bagman because they help me think. 

BUTLER (softly from a dark corner):  I've been awake since 2. 

"Why didn't you say something?"

BUTLER:  "You didn't ask.   I did think of correcting you because you said you came up to the studio when you know very well that our office is "down."   You sleep on the top three floors of the old Victorian mansion, Bagman and I have our bedrooms off the dark hallway on the first floor, and the office is a plush library with a fireplace and three desks next to the waiting room where we entertain visitors by surprising them with the trap door to the swimming pool. 

"I was referring to my actual office that used to be Brian's room until he got married and I converted the ping pong table to a matte-cutting table."

BUTLER: "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't realize which reality you were in."

And now I am distracted and can't remember what I was going to say.  Which is far different from when I started and didn't know what I was going to say.  Not remembering infers that there was actually something to say in the first place.   Damn.  Stuck again. 

Although I have been thinking about a subject which is near and dear to my heart...maybe not so "dear".  It has to do with the origins of creativity and energy in my life.  How my sense of myself has changed over time.  But I'm not sure I'm quite ready to talk about it on blogspot even though advertisements on television talk about it all the time...erectile dysfu..."

WHAM!   Bagman explodes out of nowhere, his huge, hairy, smelly bulk slamming me backwards off my chair and onto the plush carpet.  My head bangs painfully against a fireplace poker.  Butler is screaming, "Illegal formation!"  I feel like I am about to swoon, which surprises me because I always thought that swooning was confined to the female of the species.  Just before I black out, I hear Bagman's voice, loud at first then fading away...

BAGMAN (pinning my typing fingers to the floor):  "NEVER!  NO!  Not that...not... that..."