Octopus On My Back

I like to call this "still life on photographer's arm. Thank goodness I had a 20 mm wide angle lens
and my trusty Nikonos V.

4:44 am and 79 degrees
There is simply nothing more invigorating that being woken up at 4 in the morning because you left all the hatches open and it has started to rain.
I'm up now.
I even have coffee.
My novel has been emailed to my agent. It is ready to be shopped.
I am both 50 pounds lighter AND I feel like I have lost my very last child to college.
Or seen a daughter married.
I am torn.
I think writing a novel, for me, is like a severe uncontrollable addiction. Not a monkey on my back - but an octopus.
In my case it is a tentacled orange-mottled octopus that probes and clings to me every waking hour. This particular cephalopod has been with me for over a year. During these last two months he has been slowly peeled off my body and removed, suction cup by suction cup. Sometimes as one arm is loosened, another tightens its grip.
But now.
He is with me no longer.
I have eluded his grasp and he is gone.
I have a tinge of loss. Of regret.
I miss him.
I want my octopus back. I want him back...
But then.
Something is moving in the corner of my room. I see it there.
A baby one. Only a few days old.
I can feel it approach. One tentative appendage touching... investigating my toes...my lower leg.
My next novel is calling to me.
I feel its arms start to pry and hunt looking for a better hold.
Ahhhhh
It will not take long for him to grow and settle in.
Soon he too will be firmly ensconced on my back.
Intimately entwined with my skin, my soul, my very being.
Soon, too I will not be able to determine where I start and my octopus begins.
The line between us will be blurred.
We will be one.
Until he too will leave.
It is the way of all octopus.