Writers Block At 90 Pesos Per Glass
Mazatlán, June, 2014.
I’m sitting in one of my favorite establishments in Mazatlán where I have written, in my humble opinion, some decent material. Tonight, however, sipping on this glass of wine and blankly staring at the still blank yellow pad, great ideas are not exactly bursting forth. I don’t even need a great idea at this point – any thought to kick-start my brain will do. I’ll settle for any idea – for a short story, a column, or even a conversation for God’s sake. The wine, while improving my mood, doesn’t seem to be improving anything else except the local bar business.
Wine not improving my ability to dream up viable writing ideas may be an obvious conclusion for some. Yet for this guy, a bit of, or a moderate amount of, or sometimes a lot of alcohol often coaxes enough brain cells into hanging out together long enough to come up with something worth thinking about and sending down into my pen. Maybe those fragile neurons band together when they see the wine glass death squads coming for them.
One time, many, many years ago on one very late night I was sitting in the old bar at the Costa de Oro Hotel – the one across the street from the beach buildings – talking to a beer bottle. The next morning I stumbled out of bed, and while gathering my wits and belongings found several bar napkins, upon which I had copiously written, stuffed in various shirt and pants pockets. I was surprised and pleased with the words yet had no memory of their creation. I am not particularly proud of the incident, just recalling it as an explanation as to how three or four glasses of wine might inspire. But not, evidently, tonight.
Maybe, yes, another glass.
Those unsympathetic neurons need to send any epiphanies they fire up down to my pen because, as mentioned, I’m sitting at a bar in this world class Old Mexico example of a cantina and restaurant covering nearly a city block, pen poised staring down at the aforementioned empty, yellow pad.
It’s a Tuesday evening. I’m alone at the bar. There are two gringos sitting in the courtyard under an ancient ficus tree drinking Pacificos and observing menus. They look like Mazatlán fixtures. Each about sixty to seventy, one with grey hair, long pony-tail, well-worn T-shirt, cargo shorts and sandals. The other; Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals. Two baseball caps on an unused chair. If they are not die-hard locals they are die-hard Latin American travelers. Still, they don’t look like international diamond thieves or smugglers. No vampy women hanging on them. Naa, no inspiration there.
Still nothing to write about. Maybe another glass of wine. “Si Jorge, una mas por favor.” Two hundred and seventy pesos later and nothing worth writing about is jumping onto my yellow pad.
A veteran gringo musician with tired eyes wearing a blue Aloha shirt sets up in a corner with his music machine that plays old 70s and 80s standards from the U.S. He plays a pretty fair Flugelhorn as an accompaniment. I think I hear Henry Mancini music, the Pink Panther – da-dum-de-dum. I think I hear some Burt Bacharach – “What do you get when you fall in love, you get enough germs to catch phenomena.” I think I’m slipping into a coma.
I keep thinking the ambience, feeling like Hemingway could be sitting at the other end of the bar, will inspire me. No. What would inspire me is a woman I recently met slinking into the neighboring stool, gazing at me with those sexy azul-verde eyes and ordering a class of Chardonnay – a glass that sits, sweating on the bar in-between her languid, sultry sips from the cool goblet. During friendly banter involving the heat, she mischievously smiles while informing me that women don’t sweat – they glow. But wine glasses and beer bottles sure do, sitting on bars on hot Mazatlán nights. I’ll wager women have more in common with that glass than she will admit. Especially on hot Mazatlán nights. Now we’re getting into the realm of inspiration.
“Si Jorge, una mas, como no.”
Three hundred and sixty pesos later and still no writing breakthrough. All this writer´s block stuff is causing me to write all this stuff about writer´s block. This just seems ridiculous. I’m not supposed to be writing about writer´s block – I’m supposed to be thinking about it, and doing something about it. To be fair, it’s not the lack of inspiration at the moment that concerns me the most, it’s the price of the lack of inspiration. Four glasses here are about 360 pesos. I could buy three bottles of decent wine for the same amount. And who knows what kind of inspiration I could muster sitting at my desk with three bottles of wine instead of four stingy little bar pour glasses? Though at home, I’d be sitting at my desk in front of a computer monitor. What kind of inspiration is that?
Na, I’ll sit here a bit longer and wait for my muse to drift down into my consciousness – since she evidently is not going to be showing up on the neighboring stool. And if she doesn’t appear tonight, maybe she’ll visit me before too long and tell me what to write about while I’m waiting for her unpredictable and elusive company.
David Kindopp
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