job

If I could do anything, I'd hang out a shingle and use my master's degree. I'd open a writing space, with genuine quiet, not like the quiet you find in your own home, where dishes and dust bunnies whisper among themselves, where skeletons rattle and the unmade bed calls your name in a voice only you can hear. Deep quiet. Stolen quiet. The kind of quiet that you have to steal from yourself, that no one else can give you, that does not keep and will not wait. I'd charge by the hour. I'd host writing groups, poetry readings, spoken word fests, story hours. I'd encourage crappy writers and good ones alike, I'd edit the shit out of things. I'd tell the truth in the nicest way. I'd launch the next Hemingway. I'd give the next Bukowski-wannabe a sober place to collect his scraps. Anne Lamott would speak on Friday nights.

I'd call it "Write Here."

And the thing is, everybody has one -- a story to tell. I think madness is the pressure of untold stories, unspoken words, unexpressed life. You'd come, right? You'd pay, wouldn't you? Solitude for money. I think its an idea whose time has come. We buy water and light and dirt and sunburns. Quiet? Its the next bottled water. It wouldn't be a coffee shop or a library, but something in between. BYOC. (coffee) BYOF. (food) You could curl up on one of the many sofas, or cushy chairs, and bring your laptop or your legal pad and perfect pen, and write the story. Tell the tale that is your life.

Yup, that's what I'd do.