Spinning

If I cease to dream, I cease to be. Sometimes, I want to be; sometimes, I want to cease. But the body, numb, endures.

If my dreams are shattered, I can never put them back together. It is a failing. I know that but I can't seem to get over it. All I need to do is say, never mind, I'll simply find a new dream, and voila, there it would be. I do wish I could avoid the anger that follows on the shattering.

I have had to refuse to paint any more pictures. If I paint one more, and it does not come into being, I don't think I can stand it. I have had to stop wanting, stop dreaming.

Apart from two, three poems and a couple of short stories, I have not written anything for a year. I know it is a year because they have just had the novel-writing month. That was when I last wrote any of my novel.

It is a good novel but I will never convince myself of that. I know, I should bin it and start afresh. But I will never convince myself of that's being any good either, and I have lost the desire just to do it.

I can't unravel it. Do you know what I mean? I don't feel desperate or upset about it. I feel confused. I feel as though I have become enmeshed in something that I cannot break out of.

I do not mean the wife and kids. I could fix everything wrong there. I mean the not fixing it, the reason for not fixing it. I feel that I am impelled by something that is outside me, alien to me. But it isn't.

I do not mean not having confidence in my writing. I have all the confidence in the world. I know I'm good. I never doubt it. I'm better than anyone else I know. And yet, I cannot write even the first words of something good.

I know I am a good friend, a confident speaker, a bold ally, warm, kind and genuine; but I cannot begin to be anything but alone, a trembling voice, an enemy to all, cold, spiteful and faking it, every day faking it. And not even faking it for gain, but to ensure I never gain a thing.

***

Sometimes I think that what I needed, all I needed, was someone to say this is what you do. I think I still do.

Sometimes, despite myself, I imagine a stone house by the wild sea, and I think, all I needed, all I ever needed, was someone to say this is how you get it.

How do I get it?

There is no one in my life who can give me what I want. It's too fractured and bitty, and I do not want what's on offer. Or I do not want to take the routes I know towards it.

***

I am sad that I don't enjoy writing any more. I just don't have any ideas. I haven't had any for a long time. No, I mean, I have ideas. Obviously, I have ideas. If you said, write about a man in a cage, I could write about a man in a cage; if you said, write about love, I could write about love; if you said, write about war, I could write about war; and if you could say it, I could say it.

Maybe I should work upwards. Write small and let it grow. A paragraph instead of a short. A single line instead of a poem. A dream instead of a novel.

Maybe I should do what I can and stop worrying about it.

It would be nice though if someone said I want you to write the book, instead of assuming I just would. But even those who said it, don't want it, don't want to know it, didn't want to know it, were just saying it, and I'd rather they didn't.

I feel always like I'm drifting in a boat, the river is calm and slow-flowing and I won't know I've hit the rapids until I've gone over the edge.

***

Sometimes I lie in bed and I'm thinking you only get three score years and ten.

I had a cigarette the other day. I liked it. Just one. It made my head spin. I think giving up smoking was the worst thing I ever did but I'm not sure that starting again wouldn't be the second worst.

posted by Dr Zen @ 5:32 pm