Category Archives: liminality

On waiting

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Waiting is a very odd experience that is filled with both anticipation and frustration. Waiting in line is the ultimate human frustration because one never knows if one’s petition will be fulfilled or if one will be sent to the end of the line, again. Waiting in line at the grocery store to check out and pay doesn’t seem to bother most people, but if I only have a handful of items, why is the person ahead of me trying to go through the express line with an entire cartload of items? Getting in and getting out of the grocery store in a timely fashion is almost impossible because no one wants to wait. Waiting in line at the airport to do almost anything–check in, get re-booked, get on the plane, get off the plane–is a complete fiasco given the complexity of the tasks at hand, especially trying to get re-booked after a cancellation or delay or missed flight. Yet, waiting with anticipation for a package to arrive is an interesting state of mind, giddy almost. Waiting for the weekend can be both exciting and frustrating, especially if you are standing in line to get re-booked because your flight was canceled. Some people have an enormous capacity for waiting, or they have given up hope and are resigned to their fate in life–to wait eternally. Others are waiting for the end of times, which they see right around the corner, but of course, they are still waiting. Personally, I hate waiting at stop lights especially when I am the only car at the intersection and it’s 2 a.m. Waiting for the commercials to end and the television program to begin again is like waiting for Godot, and when the program comes back on I have frequently forgotten what it was that I was watching in the first place. Waiting for the bread to bake or the cookies to come out of the oven is definitely worth it–they taste that much better. Waiting for the bus on a cold winter’s day is no fun no matter how you slice it. Waiting for your date to show up and you are all alone and the whole world knows it is an empty feeling which needs no explanation. Do you wait for the mail with anticipation or dread. Can you wait to collect your first social security check. I’ll probably get my first one while I’m waiting at an empty stoplight in the middle of the night somewhere. Apparently, waiting in line at large amusement parks is not fun, and if you have no morals or scruples, you can cut the line. Waiting in a traffic jam, especially when you are late already, is liable to cause a complete breakdown. If you are waiting for someone to call you back about a job, stop waiting because they aren’t calling. I have a personal loathing for waiting rooms, especially if it is a doctor’s waiting room. I think we should be able to bill doctors if we have to wait more than fifteen minutes after our scheduled appointment time. Waiting to get your car back from the shop is nightmarish. Some people wait all alone in the dark, as Billy Joel once sang. I suppose heaven can wait. I am not a patient man, do not bear fool’s lightly, and I hate to wait especially when I’m not the problem. Yet, there are those people who wait patiently, smile, bear up, stay in good humor, and kindly wait until it is there turn. This is either an enormous virtue or a miracle, but I can’t decide which.

On waiting

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Waiting is a very odd experience that is filled with both anticipation and frustration. Waiting in line is the ultimate human frustration because one never knows if one’s petition will be fulfilled or if one will be sent to the end of the line, again. Waiting in line at the grocery store to check out and pay doesn’t seem to bother most people, but if I only have a handful of items, why is the person ahead of me trying to go through the express line with an entire cartload of items? Getting in and getting out of the grocery store in a timely fashion is almost impossible because no one wants to wait. Waiting in line at the airport to do almost anything–check in, get re-booked, get on the plane, get off the plane–is a complete fiasco given the complexity of the tasks at hand, especially trying to get re-booked after a cancellation or delay or missed flight. Yet, waiting with anticipation for a package to arrive is an interesting state of mind, giddy almost. Waiting for the weekend can be both exciting and frustrating, especially if you are standing in line to get re-booked because your flight was canceled. Some people have an enormous capacity for waiting, or they have given up hope and are resigned to their fate in life–to wait eternally. Others are waiting for the end of times, which they see right around the corner, but of course, they are still waiting. Personally, I hate waiting at stop lights especially when I am the only car at the intersection and it’s 2 a.m. Waiting for the commercials to end and the television program to begin again is like waiting for Godot, and when the program comes back on I have frequently forgotten what it was that I was watching in the first place. Waiting for the bread to bake or the cookies to come out of the oven is definitely worth it–they taste that much better. Waiting for the bus on a cold winter’s day is no fun no matter how you slice it. Waiting for your date to show up and you are all alone and the whole world knows it is an empty feeling which needs no explanation. Do you wait for the mail with anticipation or dread. Can you wait to collect your first social security check. I’ll probably get my first one while I’m waiting at an empty stoplight in the middle of the night somewhere. Apparently, waiting in line at large amusement parks is not fun, and if you have no morals or scruples, you can cut the line. Waiting in a traffic jam, especially when you are late already, is liable to cause a complete breakdown. If you are waiting for someone to call you back about a job, stop waiting because they aren’t calling. I have a personal loathing for waiting rooms, especially if it is a doctor’s waiting room. I think we should be able to bill doctors if we have to wait more than fifteen minutes after our scheduled appointment time. Waiting to get your car back from the shop is nightmarish. Some people wait all alone in the dark, as Billy Joel once sang. I suppose heaven can wait. I am not a patient man, do not bear fool’s lightly, and I hate to wait especially when I’m not the problem. Yet, there are those people who wait patiently, smile, bear up, stay in good humor, and kindly wait until it is there turn. This is either an enormous virtue or a miracle, but I can’t decide which.

On Walden Pond

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How often do I ask myself, “Why do you participate so willingly in the noisy rat race of humanity?” This is a difficult question when contemplated from the shores of Walden Pond, but my first response is easy–I don’t like being alone all the time and solitude is not all that it’s cracked up to be. At first the idea of being an independent being, completely removed from the frothing mass of humanity seems appealing, far from the maddening crowd. I mean, why should we put up with all the mediatic noise that contaminates our daily routine, the “circuses and bread” thrown to us by idiotic politicians and unthinking news sources that are only interested in defending their own interests and the truth be damned. On Walden Pond I can isolate myself from all of this noise, forget about the savage capitalistic consumerism of my neighbors, shut out the news media, turn a blind eye to the “entertainment” offered on the six hundred channels of cable, and listen to the birds chirp and the wind blow across the pond and through the trees who are my only neighbors. It is easier to live on Walden Pond than it is to tolerate the nonsense that invades my day via newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, but I can’t help but think that something is missing. Granted the noise of the daily grind is infuriating if not irritating, but is perpetual silence preferable? Am I shirking a moral responsibility to participate in the goings on that bother me, irk me, infuriate me? There have been others who have removed themselves from participation in daily life–hermits, anchorites, saints, castaways, the shipwrecked, and in all of those cases there seems to be a sacrifice which is made–the company of other human beings. After re-reading Robinson Crusoe again recently, I came to the conclusion that although Crusoe lived in isolation, he did everything he could to reproduce European society around himself, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, so that he would feel less alone, and that is what I feel here–alone. Nevertheless, “aloneness” is not entirely a bad thing unless it also looks like a prison sentence that has no end. Perhaps this is why Cain and Abel were brothers, that one alone would have been a tragedy, but paradoxically, the two together was also a tragedy. So one must consider carefully the entire question of human existence in terms of this metaphor, the pair of brothers in which love turned to hate and finally to murder because they could not co-exist without the questions of greed, jealousy, and envy destroying their relationship. Yet, one alone would have also died of eternal melancholy brought on by the loneliness of one voice speaking in a vacuum with no one to hear of either his successes or failures. Is this the central metaphor of human existence? The water laps gently on the shore, the birds twitter and caw overhead, the gentle wind blows through the trees, and if I were to fall, no one would here my cries, no one would be there to help me. The central paradox of Walden Pond seems to be my inability to rid myself of my own humanity, my desire to speak with others, to interact even with those with whom I disagree. My own ideas are interesting but I cannot exist in a vacuum either. Perhaps we are all doomed by our own noise and our inability to separate ourselves from it. In the meantime, I look forward to examining this conundrum a bit further.

On Walden Pond

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How often do I ask myself, “Why do you participate so willingly in the noisy rat race of humanity?” This is a difficult question when contemplated from the shores of Walden Pond, but my first response is easy–I don’t like being alone all the time and solitude is not all that it’s cracked up to be. At first the idea of being an independent being, completely removed from the frothing mass of humanity seems appealing, far from the maddening crowd. I mean, why should we put up with all the mediatic noise that contaminates our daily routine, the “circuses and bread” thrown to us by idiotic politicians and unthinking news sources that are only interested in defending their own interests and the truth be damned. On Walden Pond I can isolate myself from all of this noise, forget about the savage capitalistic consumerism of my neighbors, shut out the news media, turn a blind eye to the “entertainment” offered on the six hundred channels of cable, and listen to the birds chirp and the wind blow across the pond and through the trees who are my only neighbors. It is easier to live on Walden Pond than it is to tolerate the nonsense that invades my day via newspapers, radio, television, and the internet, but I can’t help but think that something is missing. Granted the noise of the daily grind is infuriating if not irritating, but is perpetual silence preferable? Am I shirking a moral responsibility to participate in the goings on that bother me, irk me, infuriate me? There have been others who have removed themselves from participation in daily life–hermits, anchorites, saints, castaways, the shipwrecked, and in all of those cases there seems to be a sacrifice which is made–the company of other human beings. After re-reading Robinson Crusoe again recently, I came to the conclusion that although Crusoe lived in isolation, he did everything he could to reproduce European society around himself, re-inventing the wheel, so to speak, so that he would feel less alone, and that is what I feel here–alone. Nevertheless, “aloneness” is not entirely a bad thing unless it also looks like a prison sentence that has no end. Perhaps this is why Cain and Abel were brothers, that one alone would have been a tragedy, but paradoxically, the two together was also a tragedy. So one must consider carefully the entire question of human existence in terms of this metaphor, the pair of brothers in which love turned to hate and finally to murder because they could not co-exist without the questions of greed, jealousy, and envy destroying their relationship. Yet, one alone would have also died of eternal melancholy brought on by the loneliness of one voice speaking in a vacuum with no one to hear of either his successes or failures. Is this the central metaphor of human existence? The water laps gently on the shore, the birds twitter and caw overhead, the gentle wind blows through the trees, and if I were to fall, no one would here my cries, no one would be there to help me. The central paradox of Walden Pond seems to be my inability to rid myself of my own humanity, my desire to speak with others, to interact even with those with whom I disagree. My own ideas are interesting but I cannot exist in a vacuum either. Perhaps we are all doomed by our own noise and our inability to separate ourselves from it. In the meantime, I look forward to examining this conundrum a bit further.

On alchemy

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I have always thought that most people do not understand alchemy at all, and they think that this ancient science is about changing lead into gold. Other than an interesting smoke screen for those who might stick their noses in where they don’t belong, alchemy has never been about changing anything except for the way we might think about things. It’s just easier to tell those who would concern themselves with material things that alchemists are trying to change one element into another–magic, in other words. All alchemists know, however, that the world is how it is, unchangeable, and that lead has its purpose too, unalterable from the beginning of time–common sense, not magic. There are those people, however, with little imagination and no ability for critical thinking, who think that magic will give them a little extra help, an advantage, so to speak, and put a little extra money and wealth into their pockets. Alchemy never has had anything to do with wealth or possessions or materialistic pursuits. Most alchemists, true alchemists, will probably never even admit to being an alchemist at all. What alchemists do, or did, was to work to understand the nature of the world and the things in it. Alchemists have known since the beginning of time that gold is what it is, but that gold never answered anyone’s questions about the nature of existence, never bought or restored happiness, ruined more than one life that sought to worship it. It isn’t that gold isn’t useful, but it can’t be an end in and of itself. You will never have enough no matter what you might think. If you carry just a token piece of gold, it will always suffice to remind you that the unhealthy pursuit of gold only leads to ruin. Whatever alchemy might be, it has nothing to do with gold. Perhaps alchemy is really about knowing yourself in the world as a small part of a wider context. Ego and pride are the two great enemies of the alchemist who must even be vigilant lest they be prideful of their humility. If knowing yourself as others know you is the ideal state of self-awareness then the true alchemist would strive to understand how the world works, how memory, abstraction, signs, and reason interlock to form new ideas or even ideas that up to that point never existed at all, and they might call it creativity. Alchemy is more about the intangible nature of cognition than it ever was about gold or lead, the wind and the surf, the eagle or the fish, fire or air. Alchemy is about dust and smoke, about lost in-between spaces, about the haze that hangs over a river on a cool spring morning, about unformed spaces and liminal crossings, shadows, hybridization and mixing, chaos and non-linearity, fragmentation, repeating infinitely and disappearing on the horizon. Alchemists will listen, but their words are few. Better to be an enigma than to spread needless gossip and untrue rumors. Let vulture capitalism try to turn lead into gold. That is a simulacrum that will drag many an unwary participant down the rat-hole of unfettered consumerism and out-of-control spending in an attempt to buy happiness. When your garage is so full of crap your cars no longer fit, ask yourself this: have you turned lead into gold? Or have you been deceived by a marauding cooperate culture of overt consumerism and the blind pursuit of materialism? The alchemist’s garage, if he ever had one, is, of course, empty.

On alchemy

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I have always thought that most people do not understand alchemy at all, and they think that this ancient science is about changing lead into gold. Other than an interesting smoke screen for those who might stick their noses in where they don’t belong, alchemy has never been about changing anything except for the way we might think about things. It’s just easier to tell those who would concern themselves with material things that alchemists are trying to change one element into another–magic, in other words. All alchemists know, however, that the world is how it is, unchangeable, and that lead has its purpose too, unalterable from the beginning of time–common sense, not magic. There are those people, however, with little imagination and no ability for critical thinking, who think that magic will give them a little extra help, an advantage, so to speak, and put a little extra money and wealth into their pockets. Alchemy never has had anything to do with wealth or possessions or materialistic pursuits. Most alchemists, true alchemists, will probably never even admit to being an alchemist at all. What alchemists do, or did, was to work to understand the nature of the world and the things in it. Alchemists have known since the beginning of time that gold is what it is, but that gold never answered anyone’s questions about the nature of existence, never bought or restored happiness, ruined more than one life that sought to worship it. It isn’t that gold isn’t useful, but it can’t be an end in and of itself. You will never have enough no matter what you might think. If you carry just a token piece of gold, it will always suffice to remind you that the unhealthy pursuit of gold only leads to ruin. Whatever alchemy might be, it has nothing to do with gold. Perhaps alchemy is really about knowing yourself in the world as a small part of a wider context. Ego and pride are the two great enemies of the alchemist who must even be vigilant lest they be prideful of their humility. If knowing yourself as others know you is the ideal state of self-awareness then the true alchemist would strive to understand how the world works, how memory, abstraction, signs, and reason interlock to form new ideas or even ideas that up to that point never existed at all, and they might call it creativity. Alchemy is more about the intangible nature of cognition than it ever was about gold or lead, the wind and the surf, the eagle or the fish, fire or air. Alchemy is about dust and smoke, about lost in-between spaces, about the haze that hangs over a river on a cool spring morning, about unformed spaces and liminal crossings, shadows, hybridization and mixing, chaos and non-linearity, fragmentation, repeating infinitely and disappearing on the horizon. Alchemists will listen, but their words are few. Better to be an enigma than to spread needless gossip and untrue rumors. Let vulture capitalism try to turn lead into gold. That is a simulacrum that will drag many an unwary participant down the rat-hole of unfettered consumerism and out-of-control spending in an attempt to buy happiness. When your garage is so full of crap your cars no longer fit, ask yourself this: have you turned lead into gold? Or have you been deceived by a marauding cooperate culture of overt consumerism and the blind pursuit of materialism? The alchemist’s garage, if he ever had one, is, of course, empty.

On an endless winter

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Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That’s just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy–a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick’s Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn’t frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn’t that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can’t even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don’t have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.

On an endless winter

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Winter is a strange season. I look forward to the cool weather all summer. As a child I would get up every morning hoping for that first snow which might fall in the dark of night while all were asleep. The cold weather and snow would eventually show up, much to my delight, but by the first of March most everyone, including myself, would be tired of winter coats and boots, gloves and scarves, hats and mittens, our shielding from the icy cold of winter. One expects January and February to be ugly. That’s just the way it is in Minnesota in winter, but March is a different matter entirely, wildly unpredictable, windy, stormy, cold, warm, wet, muddy–a mess. It might warm up in March, but only to make you weep later when the winds of a St. Patrick’s Day storm blow cruelly across the plains. April is usually when things turn warm. Yes, you might get a little snow, but when the sun shines in April, the temperatures go up, the grass turns green, and the dandelions come out. Birds sing, the lilacs smell wonderful, and the trees begin to leaf out. This is a normal April: people get their gardens ready, the snow finally melts in the shadowy places, and people begin to put away the winter stuff. Going out without a jacket is pure pleasure, the snow is gone, and when precipitation falls, it isn’t frozen anymore. This is a normal April. The endless winter of 2013 has had the people of the midwest in chains for quite some time, adding insult to injury by dumping a foot of snow on the midwest on May 2nd. Winter just got ridiculous. It isn’t that I have never seen snow in May, but not a foot. When I was sixteen, I saw a couple of slushy inches fall on May 4th, but they were gone by noon, and that year had not been particularly problematic in terms of cold or snow. This year, the year that will be known as the year spring never arrived, has been the year of the endless winter. April has been brutal with a continuous string of snowfalls that have tested both the patience and the humor of the people in the Midwest. The winds have been icy, the snow deep, you can’t even see the grass, and trees are as bare now as they were by the end of November. The snow shoveling people have been over the moon, making money hand over fist. Cities have used up their supplies of sand and salt, and don’t have money for more. Snowplowing budgets have long since been in the red, and then a blizzard hit the central plains again, this time on the second day of May. Spring is now about a month and a half behind. The farmers are concerned about getting in their crops. Local high school baseball teams have been playing in the gym. Tennis players look longingly at snow-clogged courts and think whimsical thoughts of playing in the sun with sweat dripping down their faces. The grass, plastered under the snow, is brown and dormant, the dandelions are no where to be found. The normally warm, sunny air of May still blows mean and cold, the winter jackets hang wearily from the shoulders of the pale riders of daily life in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Colorado and Kansas, the Dakotas, Iowa. These people, who normally can tolerate a lot of bad weather, are weary, tired of the constant storms, the ice, the huge piles of snow. For now, the gardens go unplanted, prom goers must wear overcoats, slipping and sliding over the ice as they go to dance. The ravages of winter still litter the landscape, no trees have bloomed out, the corn crop is unplanted, and the white-tail deer are beginning to wonder if summer will ever come. In the meantime, the people begin to clear away the snow, again.

On writer’s block

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Obviously I don’t have writer’s block. Yet, there are many things I will never write about because either I don’t care or it’s none of your business. Writer’s block is really about shutting down the creative process and convincing yourself that you have nothing to say, which, given what I know about the human race, is blatantly false. Those who complain about writer’s block are just looking for an excuse to not write, and if you don’t want to write, you really don’t need an excuse, do you? Writing is about both creativity and a lack of shame. If I care what people think about what I write, then I would never get two words on a page, ever. Writers who write do so because they cannot imagine their world in any other way–ink, pens, keyboards, monitors, notebooks, scraps of paper, moments lost to the world while hammering out a haiku. Writing for some of us is just as vital as the blood that runs through our veins. If we couldn’t write, we wouldn’t be able to understand either our lives or our passions. We read, we write, we breathe, we live, and when we have trouble or troubles or concerns or worries, we write to try to figure it out. Writing is not a perfect catharsis for what ails a person, but it does help. When we feel the knock of eternity at our door–someone dies, a love moves on, the world changes–we write in order to listen to our own heart beat, to know that we are still alive, still vital, still worthy, still marching to our own drummer. The world is alive with the smell of fresh ink flowing onto a virgin white blank piece of paper, creating a new way of loving or hating or perceiving or longing or eating or losing or playing or enjoying the whole world. There are times when you hit a perfect phrase–just two or three words that sing, that shine in the darkness, that illuminate a dark area where the monsters come from. And when you do find those two or three words that sparkle in the fog of the mundane existence of an everyday routine, you create magic, and life is really worth living all over again–you understand why you put up with crap, why you try to do better everyday, why you risk failure, why you don’t fear criticism. You write to find your way out of the labyrinth, to understand loss, to contemplate beauty–physical or mystical or ephemeral, to know the unknowable, to experience the inexpressible. Writing is life and life, writing. The blocked writer has given up to frustration and failure, given in to the idea that they have nothing to say or worse, that it has all already been said and that there is no possibility of writing anything new. Poor devil. It has all been said before, but that is not precisely the point–it can always be said again. Humans have very short memories, and writers depend on that so that each generation might rewrite everything again. I know that a writer about six thousand years ago complained that all the good topics had already been written about and that there was nothing new under the sun. He was both right and wrong: there is nothing new under the sun, but that is totally irrelevant because each generation must write their own discourse–political, social, religious, historical, poetical, fictional, polemical. So I write. The muse comes in the door, drinking bourbon and smoking a cigarette with a funny smile on her face. It looks like I’m going to be busy for quite awhile and that my writer’s block will have to wait for another day–tonight I am busy writing, again.

On writer’s block

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Obviously I don’t have writer’s block. Yet, there are many things I will never write about because either I don’t care or it’s none of your business. Writer’s block is really about shutting down the creative process and convincing yourself that you have nothing to say, which, given what I know about the human race, is blatantly false. Those who complain about writer’s block are just looking for an excuse to not write, and if you don’t want to write, you really don’t need an excuse, do you? Writing is about both creativity and a lack of shame. If I care what people think about what I write, then I would never get two words on a page, ever. Writers who write do so because they cannot imagine their world in any other way–ink, pens, keyboards, monitors, notebooks, scraps of paper, moments lost to the world while hammering out a haiku. Writing for some of us is just as vital as the blood that runs through our veins. If we couldn’t write, we wouldn’t be able to understand either our lives or our passions. We read, we write, we breathe, we live, and when we have trouble or troubles or concerns or worries, we write to try to figure it out. Writing is not a perfect catharsis for what ails a person, but it does help. When we feel the knock of eternity at our door–someone dies, a love moves on, the world changes–we write in order to listen to our own heart beat, to know that we are still alive, still vital, still worthy, still marching to our own drummer. The world is alive with the smell of fresh ink flowing onto a virgin white blank piece of paper, creating a new way of loving or hating or perceiving or longing or eating or losing or playing or enjoying the whole world. There are times when you hit a perfect phrase–just two or three words that sing, that shine in the darkness, that illuminate a dark area where the monsters come from. And when you do find those two or three words that sparkle in the fog of the mundane existence of an everyday routine, you create magic, and life is really worth living all over again–you understand why you put up with crap, why you try to do better everyday, why you risk failure, why you don’t fear criticism. You write to find your way out of the labyrinth, to understand loss, to contemplate beauty–physical or mystical or ephemeral, to know the unknowable, to experience the inexpressible. Writing is life and life, writing. The blocked writer has given up to frustration and failure, given in to the idea that they have nothing to say or worse, that it has all already been said and that there is no possibility of writing anything new. Poor devil. It has all been said before, but that is not precisely the point–it can always be said again. Humans have very short memories, and writers depend on that so that each generation might rewrite everything again. I know that a writer about six thousand years ago complained that all the good topics had already been written about and that there was nothing new under the sun. He was both right and wrong: there is nothing new under the sun, but that is totally irrelevant because each generation must write their own discourse–political, social, religious, historical, poetical, fictional, polemical. So I write. The muse comes in the door, drinking bourbon and smoking a cigarette with a funny smile on her face. It looks like I’m going to be busy for quite awhile and that my writer’s block will have to wait for another day–tonight I am busy writing, again.