eat and / or be eaten

This is a wonderful concept of broad application - nature and the food chain; a zombie attack; and if, say, Jonah of Biblical fame had enjoyed sushi. Unfortunately for the 'big fish' [NOT a whale, they always insisted in Sunday School, because as we all know, whales have TEENY TINY throat openings by which they filter their krill, so a whale could not have possibly swallowed Jonah, and it's very important to apply Occam's Razor-sharp rational thought processes to Bible stories because so many readers of the Bible have a seriously impaired grasp of metaphor. In fact, Jonah made his home in the abdomen of an Ichthyosaur like the 40-foot long fossil in Nevada, off I-50 - the "Loneliest Road in America." I've been wanting to go see for a long time. Oh - but that can't be, I just read on Wikipedia that the Ichthyosaurus was not actually a fish. If God had wanted the story to say that Jonah was gulped down whole by a giant marine reptile, that's what it would have said. Never mind.]

As I was saying, unfortunately for the big fish Jonah was indigestible and caused it acute gastric distress.

I still love this fish story though. I've acted it out now and again...the longer you avoid things you really have to do, the more your life conspires to make you do them, to a degree that can feel a little dark and cramped. I've evaded / avoided / excused myself from some work it seems I really need to do, for whatever reason. So now I find myself single with a social life consisting primarily of a dog, a cat, Facebook, some emails, and a phone call now and then, and I'm totally frigging broke, and the market for jobs that might help that problem is a bit...tight, let's say.

National Novel Writing Month begins in one week. I've never wanted so much to avoid doing something I so much want to do. Because because because because because. I have no narrative! I have no outline! I don't know who the people are! Don't you have to know these things? What if I manage to write every day for 30 days, and end up with random pieces of 30 different stories? What if I lose all control over the process and become really deranged, like Colonel Kurtz in "Apocalypse Now?" Or the guy from "The Wall" who smashes everything in the hotel room and spells words on the carpet with the fragments?

Okay, it probably won't be quite that bad. The worst I can imagine is that I might be driven to holler and cuss. This is the girl who, in high school, was too self-conscious even to yell during football games. I've come a long way. Trust me on that one.

"NaNoWriMo," if I manage to participate, will not fix anything, but it would be a reasonable use of the opportunities currently presented. I don't know about Jonah but I do love sushi. How do you eat a very big fish? One slice at a time, with wasabi. Doesn't get any fresher than this.