Writer's block. I haven't actually had writer's block in years but lately I feel like I have it every time I open a blank notebook page or open my computer. Will there be words?
Last night I needed to send in my 15 pages and I ended up with 12. I don't think that's ever happened before. Since I'm working on a book I have lots of material that hasn't been re-worked or shared yet but I couldn't get my brain to function well. It felt hot and sticky and airless here, even with every window open. My brain felt hot and sticky and sluggish. My burn makes typing clumsy. It felt like I was writing in a vat of molasses. It was hard to make connections, hard to find the spark I wanted where things fired up and flowed. I have no idea about the quality of the brand new writing yesterday. Doing my quick re-read and spell check at 11: 45 I felt no personal connection to what I was reading. It all felt flat and like it did not belong to me.
Not blocked exactly, more like stuck in the wrong gear driving through the grapevine on the way to LA back in the day in my little red honda, not knowing if we would get there before the car stalled out or overheated. The grapevine seems to take forever, especially on a hot day and without a reliable vehicle it's easy to end up overheated and stuck there, in the middle of nowhere, for hours. That's what writing feels like right now.
Everything feels a little flat and not belonging to me in my life too. I think it might be hitting the flat lands after the dying. I can play out everything that happened that dying night in minute by minute technicolor specificity. All the colors and feelings are vivid and sharp. It was all big and everything that happened was important and time was slower than the clock indicated. Now time is moving forward without me. I am not paying acute attention to anything.
Nothing seems exactly the right color. Everything tastes the same like train food did that year N and I took the train across country to do a presentation on equity and race and class at a national education reform event years ago. We got off the train in Kansas City Missouri and every place we ate the food still tasted like train food. I remember I lost my debit card and we had to eat very creatively coming back. We took conference food with us and lived on stale bagels and saltines from the train till we made it back to California. That was a long trip. Beautiful but very long and we slept sitting up and couldn't shower. It didn't occur to me at the time how ironic it was that a parent and a student who were both poor had to pay their own way to get to a conference aimed at equity for poor students and kids of color. I was really naive then. I believed that we could make a difference. I do think we can make a difference, it just has to be a big WE.
I suppose, technically, this would be named depression, this disconnect and flatness and colorlessness I feel. But I really loathe labels and boxes that make things tidy for clinicians. And I suppose my writing mind just wants to find metaphors instead. So I'm doing that thing I do until I'm right again. I'm just going along as if I were my same self, while I wait to show up again for real. I'm a beat behind everything in my responses. I'm slow inside and quiet and waiting. I'm waiting to feel all the way in my body again. Waiting for the headaches to go away. Waiting for the words to flow fast and furious and feel new and interesting to me. I'm waiting to be fully me again and not this cutout version of me that is barely animated.
What do you do when the writing doesn't want to come? Or when you are stuck someplace in your life or things are feeling upside down? Do you ever feel like you can't distinguish one color from another?
The poems-
The Shirt
BY JANE KENYON
The shirt touches his neck
and smooths over his back.
It slides down his sides.
It even goes down below his belt—
down into his pants.
Lucky shirt.
****
where you are planted
BY EVIE SHOCKLEY
he’s as high as a georgia pine, my father’d say, half laughing. southern trees
as measure, metaphor. highways lined with kudzu-covered southern trees.
fuchsia, lavender, white, light pink, purple : crape myrtle bouquets burst
open on sturdy branches of skin-smooth bark : my favorite southern trees.
one hundred degrees in the shade : we settle into still pools of humidity, moss-
dark, beneath live oaks. southern heat makes us grateful for southern trees.
the maples in our front yard flew in spring on helicopter wings. in fall, we
splashed in colored leaves, but never sought sap from these southern trees.
frankly, my dear, that’s a magnolia, i tell her, fingering the deep green, nearly
plastic leaves, amazed how little a northern girl knows about southern trees.
i’ve never forgotten the charred bitter fruit of holiday’s poplars, nor will i :
it’s part of what makes me evie : i grew up in the shadow of southern trees.
source for both poems- Poetry Foundation
Where were you planted? Where did you grow? Take a line from either poem and write from there. Or use an image that arose or a word or phrase...
fingering the deep green...
I grew up in the shadow of....
we settle into....
skin smooth bark...
The shower is calling me. I'm taking my burn to see someone I don't know at a clinic I hate going to. But she will hopefully be the right eyes to show it to.
I hope this day is good to you and your creative.
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