Jetsam

I'm writing again, though still daunted by the idea of rewriting the novel.

Here is a paragraph that ended up on the cutting room floor, or the recycle bin, or wherever pieces of writing go that never see the light of day. It's a little hyperbolic, though it does have a nice rhythm working for it.

Jetsam, incidentally, is cargo that has been purposely discarded. Flotsam is unintended wreckage of a ship or its cargo.

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People kept telling him to go see a counselor, go see a therapist, a priest, an old friend; get drunk, get laid, go to church, go for as walk, take up a hobby, lose a bad habit, and he wanted to give one or even all of these things a try, he really did, but never pulled the trigger. It was just too tiring to contemplate. Life was a river, they’d say. Life was a garden that needed careful tending. And the nature imagery resonated, albeit in unintended fashion, as life felt to him like half-starved grizzly bear that had wandered into camp late at night looking for food and found the beer instead, drank all of it and then found the whiskey, smashed the bottle to open it and got the glass shards in his throat and was now stumbling through the campfire, drunk and angry and hungry and mean, fur singed and stinking, mouth agape with drunken hunger, eyes burning demon red as the Damned Thing staggered in the dark toward the flimsy, listing tent where he and his family lay sleeping.