Along with the everydayness comes writer’s block, of which greater writers than I have expounded poetically, at length, for it is too much with us, this block.
Like ice.
Like a ton of snow sitting on my chest, full of metaphors that don’t make sense.
I sing to thee, writer’s block, but thou dust not return the favour.
Dust is actually an apt metaphor. I feel it swirling around my brain, clogging up the pathways, stalling traffic.
So I took a break and ate lunch. I read the newspaper—skimming the news and studying the advice columns and comics.
I read about another troubled place in the world to add to all the other troubled places. I sit here bored with the everydayness of things while others fight for justice and for their lives.
Thinking about such horrors doesn’t make the sun any brighter outside my window.
The everydayness of things can be a comfort at times—a good night’s sleep, a daily routine, the comfort of knowing exactly what is going to happen next.
It is in search of this kind of comfort that I go to bed at approximately the same time every night, that I have a schedule of things I will do each day, that my calendar is carefully marked to ensure I will be where I am supposed to be when I am supposed to be there, and that there will be no unexpected knocks on my door.
I both covet and resist this comfort.
The everydayness of things weighs me down.
My mind would scream to break free, if it weren’t so stuffed with the accumulated dust of endless routine.
I don’t even know how to be thankful that I have this problem, not theirs.
I grow old, I grow old.
Oh, T.S., you knew how to turn a phrase.
Maybe I have nothing to say because I haven’t been out of the house in a week.
Now that is prosaic.
Goodbye, house. I’m leaving you!
