The Atelier

It is midnight. The largest full moon of the past eighteen years hangs above my building on the Oakland waterfront. Ragged clouds race across its dull white face as it looks down on me from a watery, blue black sky. Silver clouds diffuse random, scattered bursts of lightening. To the west, in the sprawling, snarled terminus of the Southern Pacific rail line, a monstrous freight train is built car-by-car.
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Cargo ships are scattered out on the bay like peanut shells on a bar room floor. I am on the roof of my building—in my pajamas, a beer in one hand and something else in the other, standing under a full, midnight moon in the fourth largest seaport in North America watching the passenger train Coast Starlight pull clack/clack, clack/clack into the deserted Square. A fog horn brays out near Angel Island. A freight train slowly picks up speed; I feel the vibration under my feet. The non-stop radio of my mind is playing Johnny Cash. He sings, “Pig iron, I got pig iron, I got aaall pig iron.”

I have spent this entire day of successive squalls and random emergencies writing and managed to push the novel forward in a way that is more than additive, it is breakthrough. I am feeling mighty. The storm quickens and my hair whips straight out behind me. My slipstream. This is the most alive I ever feel; when I have pushed past something that was defeating me. It is exhilarating to stand triumphant in a howling wind. I am happy.
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The moment I know I am, the predator in my psyche that lives to attack all the innocence in me, to take away any shred of satisfaction or joy, put them in a sack and throw it in the river springs to life. But not tonight because, when I write, I can beat this deceiver back to stand on the roof victorious, under the full moon, and watch the California Zephyr roll out, headed for Denver. I lift my beer to the sleepy passengers as they sail past. Rain is coming. Writing defeats the predator and the energy rages through me into the inky night.
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I finish my beer and turn to go inside, back to my kitchen, back to my laptop, back to my story. A giant crane lifts container cars, one-by-one, off cargo ships.
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