i always valued the near-illegibility of my writing for the privacy it gave my handwritten journal, which went everywhere with me, until the advent of the cuneiportal, which offers the exact opposite of illegibility, and too fast.  Guarding my fingertips from staring out the window not-writing, I summon my teacher to sit cross-legged on the long, imaginary, laminated table, waiting, occasionally glancing at the edge of my personal space, like a cop, or the person at the top of the scuba line. in free-writing, even to use punctuation invites sloth.  I can’t let him down, I won’t insult the rest of his errands by not writing, so I look into windows of houses I wrote before, I alphabetize my anxieties, I take the long view of the nature of things, as long as the narrated thoughts are streaming to the keys, or pen, I wish for a faster pen, or for an autonomous keyboard. That’s the cost of the innernet, loss of solo-ness.  I don’t want to know what writing teacher is looking at, don’t go backwards and read, j’ai besoin de someone to remind me.  it works to have coffee, it works to sit in the chair, argh the page feels like the doctor’s, cold and bright and passionlessly naked, plus 2 or 3 nurses standing around learning.

writing teacher probably can’t help but look at me when I clear my throat.  after all, I might be trying to signal a silent emergency, so I have to keep typing, the not-writing is nothing more than the fact that I haven’t been reading. except the tiny speck of Nabokov, fewer words than watercolor truck stop greeting cards.  other writing teacher has to be summoned, and straight-faced despite my inability to focus, tells me the words are a tool, an instrument, the baton to the singing bowl, and to forget the written, the corpse of the writing, and just stir. body makes hunger to get out of it. but for how long it takes even to get to the abysmal point of sullying the page, I opt for coffee.