Chapter 40: Peter gets his mojo back

Ok, I had a few worried emails after my last submission. My mother said "Don't nap. Napping is for old people." My friend Gaspar telephoned - and absolutely no one telephones these days - and said "After your last email, everyone is saying that you're not doing so well". My ex, Max, said "You need therapy. Still."

Well, I'm happy to report that I got my mojo back. My 10 day slump and dalliance with writers' block is over. I stick my thumb on my nose, wiggle my fingers and say "nyah, nyah, nyah". The slump de-slumped, the muse came back, and all is well in the world. For those who care how my writing is going, how I forced that bitch muse to come back to me when she was fleeing as fast as her mythical little legs could carry her, check out my other blog How I Gave Birth to a Novel (link on right). I just updated it, after a weekend intensive writers' workshop.

Not much is happening in my life, aside from writing. But I have been having some weird dreams. The other day I had a wet dream, that I was having sex with my best friend Ruth. On its own, this is disturbing enough. We're both gay, and have known each other twenty years or more, and I have never really been attracted to women, and I've only had a couple of wet dreams in my life. But the most disquieting, most unnerving, most shocking thing of all is that in my dream Ruth had an absolutely ENORMOUS GIGANTIC pubic bush, with crinkly ash-grey hairs at least 5-6 inches long, and even worse still I found this quite exciting. (In my dream, of course; in reality it's..., well, I don't really know how to describe how it makes me feel. I lack vocabulary for this emotion. Perhaps there is a word in German.)

Of course, I immediately sent an emergency email to Ruth, asking her to please, for the love of God, confirm that she does trim her pubic bush, and that my dream wasn't some kind of psychic divination of an awful secret truth.

Subsequently, a friend of mine, who's done quite a lot of study dream analysis, asked me some very pointed questions about the dream, and then pronounced authoritatively "It means you miss your mother." Strange to say, but as soon as I heard his deconstruction of the dream, I recognized the clarion ring of truth. That is what the dream means.

What else? Who watched Eurovision? Wonderful entertainment, although clearly from a comedic rather than musical point of view. It's as though the organizers held an anti-talent contest. The girl from France, well, my ear still hurts from her song. And the woman from Ukraine looked like a peculiarly horrid mix between Pia Zadora and JonBenet Ramsey, the three year old beauty queen child, who was found murdered in her parents' basement. I've put some little photos at the side to help you. (No, the Ramsey parents were never convicted of her murder; they moved to Atlanta. You can look it up on Wikipedia.) As for Eurovision, no nation with a population of less than five million people should ever put up a musical act for this over-the-hill contest. It just makes watchers think that there is something, well, slightly insane about Lithuanians, or Maltese.

Today is so cold and grey that my fingers froze on the handlebars of my bicycle, and I had to stop at Max Brenner, a shop which specializes in hot chocolate drinks. I asked for an Italian Milk Chocolate drink, and was given a pot of melted chocolate. I feel like Augustus Gloop, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, after he fell into the chocolate river and was sucked up by the pipe. It's four hours later, and I still feel more than a little nauseous. Bye for now. Love ya all.

Oh, one more thing: Would someone please post a comment on my blog? Pretty Please?

Chapter 39: Lacking inspiration, motivation and dedication

OK, here’s a cracking Australian word for you: “root”. It means shag, either noun or verb. As in, “I haven’t had a good root in ages”. Or “I’m going to root you senseless this arvo”. (Check out my last submission if arvo sounds Greek to you; all my previous email missives stretching back to 2001 are now up and running in a blog called Man About the World (http://manabouttheworld.blogspot.com). As for root, now this is a word I can use! This is a word that is worthy of wider adoption! Spread the word!

To be honest, I don’t really have a great deal to report. Winter weather has descended and life is a rather boring routine of gym, friends, movies, writing. The writing is very slow; I am lacking inspiration, motivation and dedication. Self discipline is hard to come by, or perhaps muster would be a better word. I have set up a blog of my trials and tribulations in the writing life, called How I Gave Birth to a Novel (http://howigavebirthtoanovel.blogspot.com). In the blog I have posted some of the writing exercises that I did in class, the ones that I was proud of anyway. Check it out and leave a comment. And while you’re at it, check out also the link into Veiled Conceit, imho the best blog on the web, which is self-described as “A glimpse into that haven of superficial, pretentious, pseudo-aristocratic vanity: The NY Times' Wedding & Celebration Announcements”. If you don’t pee your pants over this one, you’ve got no sense of humour at all.

Hmmm. What else can I tell you? I’m still suffering from a whacking great surge of middle class guilt over a recent splurge urge, in which I dropped $170 on a t-shirt and $800 on a pair of boots. OK, the boots were seriously hot, crocodile skin, invitation-for-immediate-sex boots, and they were New Zealand dollars, but the guilt still stalks my soul.

My tax case incheth forward, ever so slowly.

This is a rather boring submission. To be honest today I’m so tired that I feel I may have to take up “extreme napping” as a hobby. In fact, I didn’t know it was possible to be so tired without being physically dead.

Bye for now.

Big chunk-o-love for you all.

Peter