Tonight I am certain that I don't have a writing bone in my body. I think instead of a crow, dark feathers ruffled by the wind, digging round with its velvet beak in search of flies, as I am in search of words, digging and digging.
I haven't written anything in weeks. I keep imagining that something will happen, like ice thawing, on a warm spring day, and words and ideas will come spilling out of me in a torrent.
But tonight I am tired again, and I can't imagine successfully stringing together words on a page, thoughts on the quicksilver surface of the mind, which is more like a small puddle, reflecting branches and sky, than an instrument of logic and grace.
I'm not that different than you, I think, sometimes in the dark. My daughter asks why there is a flashing light in my room. "Tell me a story," she says, "about a time when you were hurt or sick. Or someone else was hurt or sick."
I remember a different story I told her years ago, when she was three and sleep was lapping at the darkness in the bedroom. In that story, I was, as I often seem to be, tired to the bone, and she wanted to hear a story, so I started talking in that dream like way that happens just before sleep. I said that I was an octopus and that she was a fish. I told her that the fish and the octopus were swimming down and down, into the dark, dark sea. I told her about the kelp and ship wrecks, the rays of light scattering on the ocean.
And in that state, I kept saying that the fish and the octopus were going further and further into the dark. Finally, the fish gets tired, I told her, though I don't remember now if her eyes were closed. And I said, well I said something that you only say on the verge of dreams, when sleep rocks you in its gentle wake. I'll tell you that story another time though, when this scattershot mind has the grace to turn it from a story about sadness into art.
I haven't written anything in weeks. I keep imagining that something will happen, like ice thawing, on a warm spring day, and words and ideas will come spilling out of me in a torrent.
But tonight I am tired again, and I can't imagine successfully stringing together words on a page, thoughts on the quicksilver surface of the mind, which is more like a small puddle, reflecting branches and sky, than an instrument of logic and grace.
I'm not that different than you, I think, sometimes in the dark. My daughter asks why there is a flashing light in my room. "Tell me a story," she says, "about a time when you were hurt or sick. Or someone else was hurt or sick."
I remember a different story I told her years ago, when she was three and sleep was lapping at the darkness in the bedroom. In that story, I was, as I often seem to be, tired to the bone, and she wanted to hear a story, so I started talking in that dream like way that happens just before sleep. I said that I was an octopus and that she was a fish. I told her that the fish and the octopus were swimming down and down, into the dark, dark sea. I told her about the kelp and ship wrecks, the rays of light scattering on the ocean.
And in that state, I kept saying that the fish and the octopus were going further and further into the dark. Finally, the fish gets tired, I told her, though I don't remember now if her eyes were closed. And I said, well I said something that you only say on the verge of dreams, when sleep rocks you in its gentle wake. I'll tell you that story another time though, when this scattershot mind has the grace to turn it from a story about sadness into art.
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