"Every time you put an alcoholic in the White House..."

“.....Every time you put an alcoholic in the white house, the same thing happens. Our foreign policy turns to shit and we start spying on one another. Same thing happened with Nixon. Spent the entire Arab-Isreali war bombed out of his head on Chateau Margaux. Your man — Heath was it? — rang him up to try and avert nuclear catastrophe, Kissinger had to get on the line and tell him the president was in no state to speak but would call him in the morning.”

“But Bush isn’t drinking now is he?” I asked.

“In a way it would better for everyone if he was. At least then the beast inside of him would be fed and watered. It would be happy. It wouldn’t have to go looking for fresh fights.”

“You mean the war in Iraq? You think that’s got something to do with all of this?"

He nodded. “Oh yes. Iraq is a classic addict’s endgame: damned if you stayed, damned if you go, so all that left is simply to hang on, and wish it would all simply go away. Did you see him on TV the other day pleading with the American people: ‘this time it’ll be different, this time I’ll quit, just let me have a few more troops, and then we can leave, I promise.’ He’ll never quit. He can’t. He’s an alcoholic.....”

— Douglas Kelsey & Patrick Miller, In The Rooms (2009)

Writing a novel

I am about halfway through the 12th draft — or thereabouts — of writing a novel. Whoever knew that writing fiction was such a long-distance slog? I thought that creative writing had to be about the lightning strike of inspiration, with much clutching of the forehead, pacing and gnashing of teeth. Instead it has turned out to be exactly like mowing the lawn: you go up one side, pivot, and come back the way you came. Then you repeat the exercise. Actually the thing it's most like is one of those electrons (?) that shoot across your TV screen, first one row, then the next, putting in a blob of light here, a blob of light there, until a picture begins to emerge. Except slower. And with occasional breaks to stand back from the screen and squint at the snow, to see if there's anything there. In this metaphor, note, the electron inside the TV is also watching the TV, which suggests that I should steer clear of ever writing poetry, or fixing televisions.