I haven't been writing lately. And I blame time, or lack thereof. I blame this city, with apartments lit up like pretend stars and the quick-move pace of a life where I can't quite catch my breath. I blame work. The career that I am still inside of, and how I feel like the room I thought was a trap had a treadmill installed so I will feel like I'm moving. If only I had windows so I could tell the difference....
I also blame something a little more concerning. Sandwiched by excuses of the Earth simply revolving too quickly is this small itch that my nails are too manicured to scratch.
"I have nothing to say."
i have nothing to say.
About a week ago, I read a quote about writing. Forgive me for not being able to recite this exactly, and I don't remember who wrote it, but it is something like this: "All writers are desperate. When you stop being desperate, you stop being a writer."
So what does that mean, then, when the ache in my fingers, born of heart-pressure pumping, seems to have subsided? Am I not desperate enough to place pretty words all in a row? Am I not sad enough? Do I not pine enough, as the salt water has finally evaporated and allowed me to breathe? Am I not writhing around enough, looking for a way to escape my own skin?
Do I need to be?
What was I so desperate for before this? The answer is a cloud, I suppose. Floating high and just as solid. And to say that the answer is something, that the answer is anything at all, means maybe I have dulled my senses and rounded my corners and have stopped needing pretty words. That I have calmed the heart-pressure. That I decided somewhere along the way not to be among the desperate.
Desperation, all of its negative connotations intact, is the inability to escape feeling. It is the total envelopment of a person into his or her own heart without permission. And so desperation is the ache of captivity. Sometimes, it is the ache of a love swell, sweet and bursting. Sometimes, desperation is the state of being so infatuated with this round world that shadows are just the light of negative film strips. This breed splits seams with words jumping at the chance to live on paper.
And sometimes, desperation is a sadness unable to hold itself together, so it gathers at the downturned corners of blue eyes and runs away, quickly, and without apology, falling into poems and creating crystals of prose.
Or, scariest of all, it is the boulder weight of absolutely nothing. It is the scarcity of pressure. It is the need for a need to escape, or a want for sadness making its getaway, The absence of feeling is as desperate as the most shattered of irreparable broken hearts.
And that is the one which renders ink useless and forces hungry pages to stay starved. A tree rowing into knots, getting in the way of its own sun.
And I guess I will resign, for now, to that totally uninteresting state of being entirely unable to feed hungry pages.
And attempt to write about why I cannot seem to write.
