Gray Day

I don't know whether it's the absence of anything to write about that puts me in a glum mood or a glum mood which makes everything too bland to write about.  On exciting days, by contrast, the ideas are so abundant that I stumble, opening new document after new document trying to keep up with the deluge of seemingly interesting bits that come from just about everywhere, scribbling notes which I can expand upon when in a different sort of mood, one which allows me to sit quietly with one idea for an hour or two or three.

But today is neither of these.  Ideally, I would watch T.V. all day long.  Instead, I fret about my blue mood.  I try to spur myself into inspiration with chocolate, coffee, rifling through old manuscripts, attempting to find something worth resurrecting.  Nothing, nothing, and nothing.  I read a book I was enjoying, until I no longer am enjoying it.

And the worst part is, I don't feel like doing anything I have to do or anything I should do or even anything I want to do.  I don't even want to do nothing.  So I tuck myself under the covers, fully dressed, wide awake, and lie there thinking about how dull it is to feel so dull.

A phone call rouses me from bed.  It's L., from California, the very friend who suggested I start a blog some two months back.  She says something nice about my blog, and I say something nice about her role in helping create the blog.  And then she mentions a recent post she especially enjoys because she saw the guys with the slim ties, a thing we all adore, encountering something familiar. Like the way I especially love Alexander Payne's early movies that were filmed in the neighborhood where I grew up (Citizen Ruth shoots up in the alley behind Dundee Hardware and hangs out in Memorial Park!), or the way my friends in Central Africa were thrilled to see photographs of people who looked just like them and bored by photos of Eskimos.  Just think how excited we get when we discover that a new acquaintance knows our hometown, or better yet has a mutual friend.

Groove Matters, L. says.  That was the bumper sticker on L's car back when she lived in San Francisco, back when she dated a long string of men, some nice guys, some disconcerting, but all who earned a "Nope" for various offenses.  One wore a beret on the first date.  Nope.  One, who had everything going for him, grew agitated when L. placed her bagel directly on his kitchen table. Nope.  And then P. came along, her dream man in every way.  Immediately she knew.  The guy she wanted to marry.  But when he saw her car, he frowned at the bumper sticker.  "Groove Matters," he read.  "What's that suppose to mean?"  L.'s heart collapsed.  She could not marry a man who did not understand Groove Matters.  "Please," she begged.  "Tell me you are joking."

He wasn't.  But he convinced her he was and earned himself a Yep.  It's one of our favorite stories.  And all we have to do is say the words, "Groove Matters!" and we laugh and the day doesn't seem so dull anymore.  Rope belt.  You can't tangle that.