What To Write About

I want to write something but I can't think what I should write.

Alice

I want to write about Jon Mouradian, and how I drove all the way to Winchester today to go to his shop, getting lost along the way, of course, because I always get lost when I drive anywhere but in the actual city. How I sat in traffic--and sitting in Boston traffic is the worst; it goes for miles and just creeps along--with Alice, one of our guitars in the back seat. I was going to sell her on Craigslist, but something stopped me. I knew she could sound better than she did, all it would take is Jon laying his healing hands on her. And it worked. Don't sell this guitar, he said. He lowered the bridge, taking out a shim he himself had put in a couple of years ago. And she suddenly did sound so much better.

I want to write about all the people in my neighborhood, but that will take way more space and time than I have here. And I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but what stopped me was that I kept thinking of the story in the form of a play, but I thought, that would be so futile, because nowhere in the American theater could you cast the multitude of races who live around me. The American theater, and especially here in Boston, is too white. So, I felt blocked, when I should have just written it, and see how it evolved, whether a short story or anything else. A song.

For starters, there's Lisa, the Chinese owner of the farang Chinese restaurant, Great Chow, who speaks with an English accent. There's Jimmy Abdon, the mechanic who is Syrian and who keeps all the poor people's cars running, and Steve and John, who are also Syrian. Tom and Neddy are two of my neighbors, but one is Mandarin and the other is Cantonese, but I can't remember which is which, but I know the difference means a lot to them. There is Bill and Lorena, a young couple who we are friends with who are American and Columbian, with their little baby, Athena. Debbie used to live across the street. She was pure South Shore, calling you hon and offering you a beerah, while she sunbathed in her front yard. She was out there frying herself under the sun so much, for that requisite South Shore crispy tan, that she was on Google view for awhile. She had to move away. There's Wayne across the street, and his four kids, and his wife who you never see because she stays inside the house. Bly and Judy just moved to Switzerland with their two kids, but they used to live next door. Judy was from Nigeria and Bly was bi-racial from California.

This is what came out of our garden today.
Just about every day is like this.
Sheer joy to pick this.

I think that's part of the what I was saying in a previous post about making a mistake by focusing on the theater. Just the theater. Not every story can be told in the theater, like a story about the people in my neighborhood. And I was limiting myself, and I was really feeling it. Limiting myself by the art form, and also by some of the people who I've been hanging out with.

I wanted to write about this and so much more. And I guess I sort of did.