And Again

Sometimes the words dry up. Sometimes, ideas do, which is a darker prospect.

It isn’t as if the creative part of my brain has shrivelled away. No, I believe that it’s just taking some time off. Or, giving me a break, allowing me to focus elsewhere. Or, it’s allowing me to channel my creativity differently.

In due course, which is a comfortably vague length of time, the thoughts, words and the urge to record them start to itch again, and I reclaim my space as a writer. So, is the intervening unproductive period a manifestation of the infamous Writer’s Block? Not sure that it always is. Living life, the busy-ness of doing, the devouring of food for thought and the clamour of introspection, any or all of these might put words on hold for a while only to release them in a richer torrent at a more propitious time. Or I flatter myself.

But the Block does notoriously exist. In one such barren phase some years ago I had penned a few words about it, which I share with you again in this blog. The dry spells recur, but fortunately the wordless tilling and toiling yield rewarding harvests later. And it all happens in repeated cycles. Again and again. And again….

AGAIN

I wish I could resume writing. Just pick up my pen and pour the entire melange of thoughts, sensations, memories and reflections onto waiting reams of paper. And that the streams that issue forth from my mind form beautiful shapes of their own, sorting themselves out obligingly, creating art in black and white, reason and arrangement in apparent confusion, a tidy ease in a busy melee. I wish I could portion out the bundles of joy, sorrow, anger, despair, contentment, hope, grief, all the emotions in their myriads of hues, interwoven, intertwined, flowing from and merging back into each other, seemingly seamless, yet distinct.

But before that, I wish I could know what I know. Be able to know each thought, hold it in my palms, feel it, look at it, hear what it wants to say, understand its intent. I wish I could separate all the strands that are swirling around, pick one before the others. Which one? They are all mine, my progeny. Born of me, yet each day, each moment moulding a new me. A new perspective. A different idea. A fresh twist to an earlier epiphany. Fresh colours to an old memory. And I hear myself, “Aah! That’s what it is about!” The excitement of small things.

But so much is lost in translation, in communication. Putting into definite words what are at best nebulous ideas. And my mind mocks: “Was that really it? How it really was?” And then a little more is lost on its way to its recipient, the reader. “Has she really understood what it was all about? Have I been able to tell her as it is?”

Yet people write, effortlessly at times. And I am envious. I search for my muse but she eludes me. She is elsewhere. She has forsaken me. I beseech her to return. I promise obeisance. All in vain. I fret. I despair. My old foe, self-doubt, returns. Maybe, I am not good enough. Maybe, I never was. Maybe, I never will be.

But then I find I’ve picked up my pen again. My heart beats. The rhythm divine. Life as I know it has begun again.