Mermaids

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water and back.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

- T.S. Eliot,
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

I've spent the day reading about mermaids. Bloodthirsty creatures.

I've been trying to write and feeling very hopeless. I think i know where i'm going and then i start and it all disappears. Seems like such a long way to the end. I know i need to think of it like practicing the piano. An hour every day. Or at least 15 minutes.

And after a week of suffering my sugar cravings, i can feel myself getting fatter around the middle, not smaller.

Still anyway, i am successful. After bashing my brains against the table, trying to write while my mother chatters in and out about wrapping paper and second-hand couches, i finally started to have things flow.

I went out to the garage for a cigarette - yes, i know - and listened out the back door. It sounded like a creature, or herd of creatures (not cows) was rushing for the door. Really. I kept looking into the field to see if it were deer. Then wondered if it was the sound of snow melting all at once and rushing down the hill. Or maybe wind pushing through the still-standing carcasses of the sunflowers. All this noise, and nothing coming. Surely it must be wind. But at the same time, sounding so much like hooves crunching through snow only without cow-shapes attached.

I wish the mermaids would stop singing each to each and sing to me instead.