The following is a simple
writing. Each piece was written in under 10 minutes with no preparation or
familiarity with the statements that were to be provided.
“No Topic”
Here I am, been gone for two months. Everything changes in
two months. Once a month is just barely short enough to keep the connections
alive. You hear about how work is going, the performance they saw, the haircut
they got. But two months, things have begun and been completed. So here we are,
in unfamiliar places, surrounded by half familiar places, and I have nothing to
write about. I could gather and garner from many sources, and smudge the
borders, but it would be all garnish no drink, no substance.
The slow road continues. I learn this and that, but
learning the tools is not the same as having ideas, anymore than all a writer
needs is a dictionary. So my unthreaded stream wanders on, with no direction
but downhill, and occasionally up. Fragments flicker in my vision, meaningless
bits when taken out of their whole and left floating and torn like rags. These
are not my words, just a cut up quilt, a messy testament to a few things I have
seen and done.
But I plod on, filling up the hours, filling the space. Who
knows when some speckle will brightly catch the light amidst all this mud. Like
a miner panning for gold in the wilderness, far from anyone else, far from
places pockmarked with holes pillagers poked in search of treasure. No, if
there’s anything left worth finding, it’s far from the trail, deep underneath,
or sandwiched in between.
For now, I hum a merry tune, and repeat it long after I’ve
forgotten why. It helps pass the time, as I pan for…
If I knew, it wouldn’t be
here would it, safe, unprotected.
Writing is like a cycle, the momentum carries you so far,
then you begin to slow, and you see a tree up ahead, and for some reason that
looks like a good place to stop, so you do .And weariness slips in like fingers
into your legs, from the center out, and you don’t want to start again, because
that would be what you’d be doing. It would be harder again, all that you
gained is gone, and you’d have to push so hard to build it up again. You take a
few steps, but your heart’s not in it. So you turn around, and walk back.
