The Scarring Inventions of a Hypomanic Brain

Posted on April 18, 2007 in Household Mania Originality & Creativity

The details count in writing, say the books. Like the fact that seven empty cans of root beer and an empty yogurt drink bottle stand between me and the monitor at this moment. This tells, it says. So does the creak of the office chair that I am sitting in, plus the sound of Fiona dragging her claws down its coarse brown-fabric back. Mark these things when you go into the bushes looking for your cat and tell the full story of what you ate tonight at the Memphis BBQ place down at the bottom of the hill, what you washed down as you watched NBC playing the tape of the Virginia Tech shooter over and over again. Unable to hear her voice, you could tell that the journalist — Nancy Graves? — was mouthing all the usual platitudes about how sick this tape was and yet secretly thanking him for giving her some blood-spattered overtime pay and increased viewer shares.

Yes, squeeze that ball of molasses until it comes out as hard candy in your hand. That’s the secret, I am told. And yet when I let it go, when I see a brave new and coward-strange image in my computer screen, I check my pills to be sure that I’ve taken them all as the doctor has prescribed. Spring is the season for mania. What if one of these flights of imagination leads me to the scarring inventions of the hypomanic brain?

How careful should I be?