And In the Stormy Sky I See

I struggle through an inner molasses. My desire to write is quashed by my desire to be a good writer. I know I need to be writing in order to improve, but without any reliable feedback I do not see improvement, and, worse, I can see the incredible skill of many out in the world already, and I deflate. A pathetic, lifeless, child’s water balloon, completely deflated, trampled into a mud patch somewhere. Look here at the angular and forced quality of these awkward expressions. I want to pass on to you some interesting image of my inner world, but instead of poetry I show you, as if made of collapsed neutrons, the clunkiest metaphors and analogies. I serve visuals blunt to the point of somnolescence. Dry as only, cold, burnt toast can be.

I’ll come back with notes someday. I’ll show you the impossible standards to which I have set myself to be racked. Lyrics from Kurt Cobain, Belle & Sebastian, or perhaps even something of value from Pynchon. I want very badly to be creative. I have interesting images bubbling up springlike in my mind, but I gave up on the troubles of moving pictures and the vast effort required to realize them years ago. I think it was mastering the light meter that broke me. So I thought, or perhaps I simply fell, lifeless already, into believing that to write, to type out speedily, the words rotting in my skull would be easier. But the tofu is cold, and extra firm. It takes so much work to do anything. To start anything. The absence of inspiration is not just a lack of drive, it is a distinctly sticky obstacle that reminds you, with a sly smile, that there is so much else you could be doing that is easy.

I want to write. I want to express something I know. I want to break through the experiential barrier and let you know that I am here, having feelings and thoughts. So much of the world screams out against this truth. So much of my own biology struggles to settle into conformity and comfort. I have rules. I have to write a certain amount every day. It feels like pulling a broken, forever inverted umbrella through a hurricane. The wind, the frenzied chaos of life, is against me. And while the flame of my resolve, some irritating spark of life, will not go out, it sputters as I gaze into the stormy sky and see. Agape, I stare and witness, soaring there, comfortable in the raging winds, masters of that space, those great beings of our recent era spreading their wide wing-sails of meaning, aesthetic mastery, power, fame and fortune. They feast on the storm and achieve, while I am crushed, eating myself, turning to ash, my destiny blending meaninglessly into the hoi polloi. The future soil from which someone else’s glory will be nourished.