miller's crossing

I have no greater literary love than Wittman Ah Sing, the poet/playwright protagonist of Maxine Hong Kingston's novel Tripmaster Monkey: his fake book. He also appears in her Fifth Book of Peace. In my mind, I have dedicated this site to him.

In Tripmaster Monkey, while Wittman is working in the Toy Deparment, he thinks, "So it has come to this." Kingston inserts, "(Lew Welch, the Red Monk, says: now and again, stop and think, 'So it has come to this.')"

As I sit at my kitchen table with my laptop on a Monday night posting half-formed thoughts on my website, I think, "So it has come to this."

Thirty-five, single and feeling unmoored, I'm finding myself inspired to be a poet, an artists, a musican, a wanderer. The day job is not cutting it anymore. And most people tell me I have a good paying gig.

So what if I drop it all? Is it just a self-styled, mid-life crisis? Can I really hope to aspire to the creative life? Do I have the discipline? Will it be okay to fail and end up with less than I start? Will it be okay to succeed and end up with more?

A little voice says to me as I write this, "Real artists don't ask these questions. They just do it." So, am I hopeless?

But I feel like I'm just about to burst ... something is welling up inside me. But the skill, the stamina. I need to be practicing and working out more. My creative muscles have atrophied. And the truth is we'll only see what I can do once I started doing it.