Writing is Hell

Almost a full month has passed since my last entry. I blame work and new friends and laziness, but most of all, I blame the inherent daunting-ness of writing. Jorge Luis Borges said, "What a writer wants to do is not what he does," which is a little Pauline for my liking, but I can forgive Borges that because he's spot on. I want to write and yet I don't. I don't want to write and yet I can't process anything without it. Without the binding of text I think my mind would bounce aimlessly from pointlessness to pointless, eventually taken up by this New England winter wind and shuffled off to God knows where. Probably to Minnesota or Nebraska, if God operates as ironically as I think he does.

To avoid processing, I've let others process for me: Alice Munro and Toni Morrison and, most recently, Laurie Sheck. Unfortunately, Munro writes a world in which everything explodes in subtlety. Morrison divides everything in two. Sheck writes words all poets love/hate: "sometimes," "always," "enough."

The point being, I'm in a rut of avoidance. More coming soon!

No Summer As Yet

by Laurie Sheck

And no summer as yet, but it will come with its bright peices of whatever,
Sorted by the eye yet still uncaptured,
Greenly branched and various with promise. I'd like to watch it long enough,
Held fast by the laws of its sequencings and shappings, and be so carried, the way the mind goes in
Search of an after that will temper what has come before,

Or sometimes not—: Did I tell you of the man I visited last week, who hasn't lost the ability
To move his tongue, his lips, to laugh or cry or sing or use his voice, yet is unable
To utter any words, just a few unintelligible syllables,
And recognizing this, stares into the face of it
As at the eggs in an opened anthill? I don't know how to think of him. We are so rawly made,
So carried into the harsh and almost-dark.

As if stung in the throat. As if seared by a narrow wire-like blaze
Sharply upon the air and always.