Chipping the Block
Posted Under: Pathetic
A few times a year I have a dream that I loose teeth. Sometimes it happens by me cross-biting myself and bending my pearly-whites out of place. Other times it’s decay. A couple times I have been so annoyed by a jiggling tooth that I forcibly extract it and I feel pissed and relieved at the same time.
This last scenario describes an action-oriented artist’s approach to writer’s block. There was a time when I accepted writer’s block. Now, with my back against the wall, I have to claw away at my craft until I’m typing with bloody nubs and on a liquid diet.
Highway driving for an extended period of time can create an optical illusion. Once the car stops, it can appear that the ground still moves. People can work and worry and fret and fuss and fritter time away until the time to start something serious, to really live and in the stillness of that moment, life will still appear as if it is passing them by like specs of gravel.
That was me, but my highway was underwater. Scuba divers understand the dangers of pressure, even people who have ever dove to the bottom of an in-ground pool know what I mean. All that water weighs heavily on our fragile cavities. Needless to say, shit gets dark sometimes. Life will dump a deluge of shit on me that will make me struggle just to get nowhere slower than usual, so when I get a break, it seems as if I’m still floating on Shit River though my ass is in a steel chair. No cushioned, wheeled chair for me to sit while I type.
Regardless of the pressure and dearth of light in our cloudy city, I continue in my travels, clawing and biting all the way. The block can seem insurmountable at times, but that doesn’t mean I will ever stop punching it in spite, even if it means losing a few teeth. Perhaps that’s what I need. That could enable me to whistle in new ways.
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