d. w. merriman

Think of Gabriel Garcia Márquez at home, writing, smoking cigarettes. He knows he can write a masterpiece, and he knows how to do it. My grandparents’ home. That certain tone. In vapors, in colors, in before-words, the blueprint exists. If he does not stalk the tiger and kill it now, it will escape him. So he writes. He writes during the day and smokes during the day until the sun goes down and warms the little room he has been sitting in for so many mornings. He throws away his cigarettes and puts away his book and pen and crawls into bed. He gets naked under the covers and smells of smoke. His wife touches his hair and slowly undresses, standing and leaning on the unmade bed, asking him about the children and about the money. Of course with the money it is worse than he had promised, something which he thought would be easily conquered had revealed to him its true size, it was like lifting up an avalanche, it was like being wrestled to the ground. She knows he is full of lies — it is almost finished, just one more week, I am almost ready — but she loves him and loves his confidence; she tries ignoring it. The idea of a masterpiece, even one that is hidden, even one that is brutal and fights back, is something to be respected. It is like a blind man encountering the ocean. It is like something holy. Of course the blind, like us, must pay the bills. The novel is both his blindness and his way of seeing. It is as if he too decided: “Let me have a child.” It is like a beautiful demon, the unmade book. It is like liquor. Each day they drink from it carelessly. It is a polluted river. It soaks their beds. The novel is everywhere. They smell it. They are eating it. It seeps uncontrollably from the ceiling like wastewater. It warps the wallpaper and stains the floors. Heaps of words. Heaps and heaps of words. It leaks into their little home and smells of their shit.