The First Day of the Rest of His Life
Point and Shoot, Florida (YU)--Heap rolled a sheet of paper, a yellow second sheet,
and a sheet of carbon paper into his Olympia portable typewriter, and started writing.
September 1, 1971.
He wasn't sure of the date, but he thought it must be
around there somewhere.
Anyhow, he made the leap.
The great leap
of faith.
That day--whatever day it was--was the first day of the rest of
his life.
Back then--his fellowship year--he went at it as a job of work,
and took the weekends off. But later, after his fellowship ran out, and he started
working full-time, as a laborer, and he started writing weekends, to keep up, he
began to work seven days a week, before and after work and nights and weekends, and
has worked that way ever since.
Heap doesn't get days off.
Holidays
are for working, as Marc Chagall put it.
Today is Sunday and Heap is at his
typewriter, writing.
He hasn't had a day off in 35 years. Say 34 years,
to be safe.
Chagall had to work every day, he was competing with Picasso
and Matisse.
Picasso and Matisse were competing with each other.
Who was Heap competing with?
No one. Heap was trying to get it all down
before he died.
The urgency was on him.
He would have done it if
no one wanted it.
He did do it with no one wanting it.
At
first, he thought someone would want it.
When he found out they didn't, he
kept at it, because he thought someone would want it sooner or later.
Then,
he was used to doing it. It was habit. He had habituated himself to doing it.
Without anyone wanting it.
Then, he was rolling.
Nothing could stop
him, then, because doing it didn't depend on anyone wanting it.
If
they did, that would be nice. If they didn't, too bad.
I'm not sure when
Heap reached this point.
I'm not sure how he reached it.
I think
it was in his character, and the military had something to do with it, high school
sports, being a preacher's kid, comic books and Saturday afternoon serials, pop culture.