Manifestos

There was almond butter with flaxseeds, and a container of blueberries, and some whole grain bagels. What I did was, I split the bagel in half and toasted it just so, enough for it to have a bit of a sandpaper finish, spread too much of the almond butter over both halves, added a drizzle of agave sweetener, embedded a few blueberries into the nutty cement. Voila. A perfectly sensible breakfast. Healthy, even. Outside the marine layer sprawled over inland Carlsbad like a chubby gray cat on a frat house sofa. I thought about going for a run but the kids were awake and I needed to get some work started. "Finished" was probably too much to hope for. A quick scan of the Internet: an article I'd written had yet to appear, a draft I'd started was languishing in the queue, a few email inquiries I'd met were as yet unanswered. I looked at my usual morning coffee websites. There was a post on one about a taser shotgun: it fires five tasers at once, with a range of up to 100 feet. I made a note of that; there was something in the first draft of the novel that wasn't sitting with me, and it was that bit with the tasers, and how could they do that as I'd written? They couldn't; these could. Research, research, research. Sometimes doing it yields up nothing but then the facts you need, they find you. From downstairs came the sounds of the house really waking; the muffled arguments of children, the sharp staccato reply of their mother getting them straight, triggering that response like a barrage of sonar pings against my hull; me putting on my stern face and starting to rise up out of my seat to engage...then the quiet of a poured bowl of cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios, I guessed, based on how quickly that silence descended. I read some blog posts. I thought about making some sort of declaration, some Statement of Intent, as those seem to always want to manifest themselves on days when the sky's muddled and you can't see two miles past your backyard. But such proclamations burn off when the clouds do. I just go with it.