The Death of a Writer
Some days are great for writing. The words fall out onto the keyboard, and I have trouble picking them up fast enough. Days like that I imagine being a writer, selling novels and typing and typing until my word count is complete.
The days in between those, when I am distracted and trying to force the words to come out, those are the days I feel like climbing under the covers and hiding until the winter Of My Lost Words is over.
Winter never passes in these parts, it only feels like it is over. The vessel, of which I am the only passenger, remains only in winter.
Then, tonight I started to write. My face is passive, with a scour that descends upon my brow. I frown at the keyboard, at the air conditioner, and at the darkness and all I can sum up is this measly, useless post about not been able to write. I fumble and I fall, and I try not to get stuck.
This is not writers block. This is laziness and a lack of determination. This is me, choosing to write something new and different, and not stepping back upon the only vessel in these waters.
The vessel that drifts these waters is small, and dark. The man who steers it is a small man, of unaccountable strength, hidden below a cloak that shrouds all light from his being. He drifts the still waters, back and forward, not saying a word or uttering a syllable. Any time I wish to write, I must be board his vessel, doing nothing else by writing, and the words will come. Slowly at first, and maybe slowly at the end – but the will come.
Tonight I chose to watch the vessel, and think of myself as a writer. I did not step aboard, I did not chose the dark waters – in which my soul becomes lighter – I chose to watch the man drift in the calm waters.
But as I watched him, the hood covering his face, the shadow enveloping his being upon that vessel. He moved his hands with care, pushing the long steering-rod against the bank, which I could only make out in as darker shadows against the ripples upon the water. He pushed away from the bank and I realised I was with him.
He made no words, spoke no thoughts, just pushed from the bank and we entered the waters, where the words fell onto my keyboard.
Aboard his vessel, I do not imagine myself as a writer selling novels. Aboard that vessel I am a writer.
