\nSo here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little project that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meant to help me break through\na bit of…something. I would call it a creative block, if that were\nfitting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if I had that One Great Story in me, blocked only by an\nunfortunate convergence of words. Or perhaps a failed convergence. \n(Would \u00e2\u20ac\u0153divergence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d be better? No matter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A reconnection, maybe. Hopefully. 500 words, semi-regularly, about…anything I can manage to muster 500 words about. To see what happens if I try it. To see if anything happens if I try it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To see if I can even DO it. I’ve tried before, with less ambitious goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so, blank page,\nhere we are. How is it that we can have had so many first dates and\nyet it is still as awkward as ever?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Somehow I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t\nget rained on en route home today, despite it being the sort of\nweather one sees described in books as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153leaden.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thick, gray\nclouds heaving water down onto earth too lethargic to groan under the\nweight; damp heat creeping up and in and under your clothes and into\nyour lungs until lying down and choking under it starts to seem like\na viable option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not that I did;\ninstead I walked home past the squirrels busily ferrying walnuts to\nparts unknown and the sodden playground and the incongruous,\nhilarious \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thug Lyfe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d someone has written with a stick, or a\nfinger, in the pavement \u00e2\u20ac\u201c printed letters in a schoolroom-tidy hand\nthat is about as far removed from said Thug Lyfe as I am from ancient\nPhoenicia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though I guess\nPhoenicia did give us our alphabet, after a fashion, so perhaps it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\nnot as far as all that, if you look at it a certain way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve\ntalked about the weather. Might as well tick off all the\nawkward-date boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…So. How about\nthose sportsball scores?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Somewhere behind me, out in the dark, a little colony of rabbits is getting on about its business. I see one every so often, loping across the garden path in the twilight \u00e2\u20ac\u201c though only the one. There must be more, but where? I wonder whose shed they live behind, or under; I wonder if they live a kind of urban Watership Down <\/em>life, telling and retelling stories of El-ahrairah as burlesque or beat poetry to one another so that the generations of rabbits after them will at least know the tales of those stars the streetlamps are too bright to let them see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just rabbits<\/em>, I hear in my head as I write that. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sensible, practical voice, the same one that reminds me that I need to buy milk and that I forgot to finish that thing at the office and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the dryer beep about, oh, thirty minutes ago?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\nwhere all the creativity has gone \u00e2\u20ac\u201c drowned in an ocean of to-do\nlists and sensible shoes, weighed down by a five-pound bag of flour\nand old clothes that never fit and yet wore through and about\neighteen billion lost pens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps this is\nfoolish. It certainly feels that way. Like an excellent way of\nsaying something stupid, of making someone angry with me, of bringing\ndown on my head wrath or scorn or shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe there is\nnothing to find?<\/p>\n\n\n\n If there were, would\nI know it if I found it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n …Ah, well. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alea iacta est<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little project that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meant to help me break through a bit of…something. I would call it a creative block, if that were fitting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if I had that One Great Story in me, blocked only by an unfortunate convergence of words. Or perhaps a failed convergence. (Would \u00e2\u20ac\u0153divergence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d be better? No matter.) … <\/p>\n