Are You Lost and Found in the Box of Jobs and Woes?
By now enough people have seen the Barbie movie to know the Ken doll’s declaration about what he thought his job was. “My job is beach.” Beach. All-encompassing. In toto.
Well, my job is Book. All-encompassing. In toto. The Great Enchilada. The Whole Shebang. Advice abounds about how to write Book, fit Book into genre, entice book gods for favor, sacrifice at least the first three-borne to Poets of Funk. Is that my job? Is that book?
No.
When I say my job is book, all that other stuff gets thrown out the window. When the job becomes selling book? Maybe. But the book itself, the idea and taste of it, brings a precise type of labor, one that demands I ignore a lot of what I want to happen with the book and focus, please focus, on the book. There’s any number of metaphors I could use, but I like this one: a book has an ecosystem. I’m not talking about worldbuilding within the book, I’m talking the concept of a book itself. There are word flora and fauna that depend on each other to keep book on its proper axis (determined early on by the soul of the book) rather than being a storm-crazed wobble of clashing systems. Rivers need to become tributaries, need to become oceans. Note: I’m not talking about points of craft. Points of craft are part of book…but not entirely book. If I can get quasi-mystical (and seriously, when can’t I), book is the holistic reception and presentation of quantum connections which we invariably do not see, taste, feel, smell or hear, but always know are there.
Book is closing your eyes and knowing there are people everywhere doing the exact same thing. Reaching out. No waste.
Book is the recycling of experience into tangible existence. All these words and choices, these 4th-dimensional mindsounds, aggregate into the hope that you and I understand at least one thing among the infinitude of whirling needs rushing through our heads. My job is feeling something. No, “feeling” should be italicized. Feeling something. Because by the time you get done with book, you should feel something too.
Book encompasses me being in touch with so many aspects within me and outside the great gestalt that I literally get lost. My job being book leads me to so many altered states of mind not even touched by the Unknown Manuscript of Paddy Chayefsky as to turn me into the thread and the needle on the Great Singer Machine of Life. Lotta greats in job being book. Mentality. Sensuality. Sexuality. Tri-polarity. Heat. Death. Life. More life. The Great Poetic Link of Think. My job is to sit my ass down and think about you. I have to be able to see each and every one of you, and then, in the blink of an eye, create bridges to what you need. Now, of course it ain’t what you need till you decide you need it. Till then, book is words. Queefy ink. And it ain’t for everybody. Hell, this loopy blog post ain’t for about 3. 4 if it’s my birthday. Numbers are not my job.
Book has a soul.
Book has a soul.
Book has (what) a soul.
Book has what a soul! Book is as boundless and exciting as a first real kiss. To make book my job I have to close my eyes and pucker up: ego getting in the way of story is like lips latching onto a balloon when you were going for boob. To exist within sufficiently to create book is to spiral upward through galactic planes that taste like sad memories overcome. It’s like experiencing pie while having sex, but who among us can attest to that dream? Attaining the dream isn’t the point. The cliché is 100 proof: it’s the journey. My job is sitting my ass down and taking somebody on a journey. Get our Rod Serling on. Pretend our brains are covered in nibbly bits, and whee is but the thong to be nudged away.
Your college prose professor didn’t tell you that.
But word, I say unto thee, is bond. My job bonds me to you. Word to sentence, sentence to meaningful expression, expression to intent, intent to things desired, things desired to some manifestation of you and me. Bond.
Genetic bond.
King James bond.
Hyperkinetic funkrock shea butter gold bond.
My job is being imaginative enough to receive your imagination too. Whether we ever meet. Whether I ever see you.
Word is sex, which begins in the mind. In the beginning was the word.
And we both know how that goes.
Book was good enough for God…so it’s not just my job, it’s the Great Word Bless You’s too.
Stay tight like glue.
Our job is book.