Grrrrrrr....

Says the tyger. It's been long enough.

Long enough spent resting, eating, feeling safe and cozy. Now I can feel the pacing beast inside me and it occurs to me, not for the first time...

Maybe I'm one of those people who will never "grow up". I talked to my mother on the phone today and she is shoving writing jobs down my throat, assuring me that I just have to find the right job, something really interesting, and I will be excited and passionate about it. She sounds a little desperate when she says it, desperate to convince me, desperate to believe it herself?

But I don't believe it. I may end up working some job type job for a little while right now to facilitate the healing of the hip, but passion? For writing about other people's lives, other people's dreams, for other people's publications? I used to think that being a journalist would be such a fabulous job, but that was before I found this life I have now. And I can't go back.

I can deal with many of the recent changes. My gym for instance. Only a few months ago I was aerobicizing away amidst herds of lanky models, carefully tanned actors, and grizzled producers. The Hollywood sign floated tauntingly outside the massive plate glass windows and everything was gleamingly fluorescent, new, painfully trendy. Up and coming DJs set up their rigs to spin dub step and mash ups for the hip hop and stripper pole classes taught by professional dancers. Half the breasts in the changing room had surgical assistance in maintaining their buoyancy.

Now the creaky hand-cranked windows in my gym look out onto a quaint bagel shop and a used electronics store with a broken neon sign that flashes intermittently. My fellow fitness-seekers are mostly dumpy Chinese housewives and retired cops on crutches. The one set of loudspeakers was, during the brief moment I removed my earphones, playing Lionel Ritchie. The pace of the average workout taking place around me is desultory that I frequently wonder why they come to the gym at all. As usual, I stand out a bit, which isn't necessarily a problem, but when combined with my broiling frustration it makes me feel a bit like the high school kid I used to be. Testy.

I love my home now, it's beautiful. It is far more beautiful than anyplace I anticipated living in the near future. I have a boudoire, and I sleep in a bed fit for royalty.

So I find it odd that I am so restless. Who wouldn't want what I have? And yet deep inside the tyger paces and growls and I have to get back to work soon. I have to get back to the struggle, the birthing. It's the only way I know to get this thing out, and if it stays inside me it will chew its way out through my ribcage, eviscerating me along the way.