Unspun

Some nice person who likes my prose has been writing me about where the words come from.

I reply:

Mostly these days it's more about clawing something worth saying out of the air, rather than the words with which to say it. If only the thought would come. I keep on shredding whiskey and tobacco in the hopes of uncovering some secret hoard of Real Thoughts from which the words could be easily unspun, instant by instant.

No look, it's very nice of you to say such kind things. There's a knack to the way of speaking, I don't know where it comes from or why, but most of us who have it end up hiding with each other, from the stacks of people who presume it's a kind of pretention (pretense is not offense just another kind of escapism) or an outdated mode of thinking of the ancien regime whose sacrifice is necessary for the red army's success (sad sad rebels of a revolution already defeated).

I am working at a little cafe in Noe, where the laptops line up and the world winds up on coffee until the words spill out over keyboards and out into the ether.