Slumdog and writing again.

Slumdog was one whiz-bang ride. It was thrilling in spots, sobering in others, even hilarious at times. And I got all excited again watching that Indian version of Millionaire with the unctuous host (is that for real?)--who would have thought it possible? Oddly, with its genre-blending pyrotechnics, it reminded me of what Baz Luhrmann tried to do, less successfully, in Australia.

That said, I wish I'd liked it more. It kept me at a distance, somehow, and I think the wham-bam editing was the reason--it was so kinetic at times that I was just holding on for dear life. Another reason, I admit, may have been our 10 p.m. viewing after (for me) three glasses of wine and fried chicken. But something made it seem like an exercise--elaborate and artful, and involving, but an exercise.

Yesterday I sat at this here desk (after shutting down, unplugging, and putting away my laptop--out of sight, out of mind) and wrote in pencil for two hours on a newly purchased Office Depot note pad. I didn't have much purpose behind it except to get back to that nonthinking, intuitive side when the words kinda go through me like a sieve. And I got there a couple of times, esp. when I was simply describing how full and awful I felt after that third glass of wine, trying to make me feel again what that was like. Before and after that bit, I was mostly writing about writing, writing about how I didn't have anything to write about, but sure as shit, the first five minutes passed and I got on a mini-roll.

Then I took a break and proceeded to try to write a poem about last night--nothing ambitious, just a few lines on overindulgence, sloth, bitterness--and cursed, crossed out lines, got angry, and declared the afternoon, nay the day, a waste. But of course it wasn't, even after I ripped up the pages and tossed them in the recycle bin. I had to write that in order to write something else. If it's the start of something else, something bigger, I'm confident enough to know I can get to that place again. Just as likely, I'll go somewhere else next session.

But I hope that was the beginning of getting back into...something. For about 10 minutes there, I was back in that great place of generating words without "monkey mind." And this is a different feeling from the memoir writing I did last fall, more animal and elemental somehow.