while i mean to write more often (if only for myself, if no one else), i don't.
i can try to impose as many deadlines and as much meaning into arbitrary things like journals, websites, and various forms of "inspiration" but ultimately, i cannot build a scaffold around the imaginary. there is so much left to do at the end of the day; i could stay awake all night thinking about the introspection i haven't gotten around to. i am cobbling together a life composed of the unstudied, unwritten, unsaid, and unexplored.
is this writer's block? most days, i think it is more than that. language block? cognition block? this morning i read an article on the air attacks on gaza. is there a word or phrase for the feeling of swallowing hard and having my heart sit at the bottom of my throat? how do i express not crying but wanting to? is the term "dry-heaving tears" appropriate?
there must be more eloquence in the world than this--reserved, buried somewhere in the loam where its seed can sprout undisturbed. there must be more eloquence in the world for the dead--those who once woke in the mornings for work, who knew the familial comforts and distresses of routine, who breathed the same particles of life and grit that i still do. the unexpected dead who float weightlessly upon life until the undertow pulls them in.
none of this is right. none of this is what i mean or is enough, for this situation or anything else. there was a time when my first response to anything would be to eke out the terrible. after so many years, i've burnt myself out on the miserable. but happy is harder to stretch out or even to find. i am looking for some semblance of reality, something to remind me that i am human, something i can put on a page and extend to someone and say "you are human too." but it never gets any easier, and most days, i can't...
and that's why i don't write.
