discipline

last night i had dinner with my roommate, lasagna from the freezer, we had gone through about 10 people, trying reluctantly to do a christmas eve dinner with lots of guests, but people were doing something with other people who care about these things, or home nursing their 'depression', or lying in bed watching videos on their laptop, i don't know. he had set up a nativity scene in the kitchen with a sevillana lady and a little iron torero in a pink cape that ernesto had given me flanking a faucet knob, and mid way through the dinner -- which had started me knocking over the faucet-baby and him dropping the lasagna, he got up to fetch a book he had in italian by salvador dali and returned with a gray starched shirt and a cravat.

earlier in the day we tried to fix the washing machine. the water doesn't seem to drain from it, so in a frenzy we disassembled the whole thing, forgetting to turn off the water so spraying water all over the kitchen, then we decided the tube must be clogged, and there was a comic moment where the water was off, and i was standing on a milk crate in the bathroom, my arms extended over my head, pouring kettle-water into a funnel through the tube while he directed the sewagey muck into the toilet.

but in the end it wasn't fixed.

so with the shadow of the absurd washing machine failure dripping its dirty drops over the dinner table. we talked about being an artist, and about movements, the double face of those living in the city and the calm that comes from sitting behind a machine gun. we talked about pioneer berlin squatters who make nervous excuses for their bmw's, and the barcelona people who live their life on photoblogs. about spain and the soap operas of the old-new left. he talked about bukowski and he asked me why i wanted to be a writer, or no, rather.............. what did i want to do with writing?

and i didn't know. all i knew is that i wanted to get something out, i just had to do it, and sometimes it was so hard just to get myself to do it. he said there was no such thing as discipline, what you do is there or not, it's just a matter of what you call it, and i thought:

discipline of course seems unnecessary for those who have it.