I was thinking about writing today. I’ve been suffering from some form of writers block for the last several months. I am able to write, but it is small bits and pieces of things. It has been pretty rare that I have managed to write anything of any substance or size. I have stories that I am inclined to tell. I have thoughts, ideas, observations and little journeys of imagination that are the basic building blocks of story-telling. But they are not reaching the page. They are not becoming full blown stories.
I seem to be mostly content just watching. Perhaps I’ve got too many things on my mind. Lord knows it has been a busy, and not always a good busy, year. Lord knows that the year has flown by. I’ve expressed a near continuous desire to slow time down. But, then things will happen that do slow time down…and I still don’t write. Maybe it is a time in my life when I should just be observing. Maybe it is a time for watching, listening, feeling, smelling, and tasting. I don’t know the answer to that question – but I do know I want to be writing. So I call it writers block without any real hesitation.
I know assorted tricks to overcome writers block. I have been writing long enough that I’ve encountered writers block before – in some cases far more profound writers block then this. But there is usually a reason for it that I can put my finger on. There is usually some visible obstacle that I can surmount or circumvent. Right now, there really isn’t. Not any external block anyway. There is just a space between the imagination and the paper.
Part of me knows that what I really need to do is just sit down and start filling that space with words. Part of me knows that the best way to get through writers block is to just simply start writing. Write anything. Write everything. Eventually the good stories manage to find their way through. Eventually the words return and the stories start to spill out onto the paper. I am hoping to find that balance point soon.
I’ve got two thoughts about how to move past this writers block. First, I’ve been contemplating staring a new online journal. Rod’s Floating World has a certain history, a certain weight to it. I started it at one point in my life and it was sort of a catch-all through a certain time. However, I am not in that time-space any more. I’ve moved out of it. Life has altered in the small and subtle ways that it does and those alterations seemed to pull me away from that place.
But then it dawns on me that any online journal is just a place. It is an empty piece of paper. What is in the journal has nothing to do with the dimensions of the journal itself. An online journal is like an empty bowl. The usefulness comes from its emptiness. It’s not about the bowl, but rather about what you put into the bowl. Lately, it seems I have been filling it with breakfast cereal. Not that there is anything wrong with breakfast cereal, but it’s not a meal. As a writer I’ve been hungry for a meal for a while now.
Today I reached the decision that I was not going to let “Rod’s Floating World” slip away from me. It’s a beautiful little place and it has a certain history to it. I sometimes like looking back at previous years, especially on sort of a month to month to month comparison. It’s cool to see the rhythms of life played out there. Even though the rhythm of this life has changed, I want to keep playing out that rhythm here, in this wonderful little bowl that is “Rod’s Floating World”.
Additionally, I am spinning up two other online journals. After some careful self-examination over the last couple of months and a bit of a trial run, I’ve decided that one of the things that will help me write my way forward is to focus my writing around themes. “Rod’s Floating World” is going to be my place to write about, well, the Floating World (1). “A Blue Bowl” is my place to write about my ongoing journey toward minimalism and a life of simplicity. “Chain of Words” is a place for my original poetry and short fiction, some of which is of an explicit and adult nature.
Somewhere along this journey I lost the core of the “Floating World” and it became a catch-all, a sort of back water where all kinds of flotsam and jetsam was washing ashore. I’d kind of like to write my way back over to the heart of it. Part of this journey that I am on right now is the journey toward simplicity and minimalism that I mentioned above. One of the internal drivers of that journey is the desire to once again move in the core of this life, to once again find the core of this floating world.
A few months ago, in a conversation T.R. and I were discussing the journey toward simplicity and she made the comment that one of the things she would like to see me try is to also try and make that journey in my writing. I’ve also thought about that intermittently ever since she commented on it. I think that part of the reason I lost the ability to write is that what I was writing became cluttered and once cluttered it lost its core. Inside that core is what I love about writing.
Creative writing, whether you write poetry or fiction or creative non-fiction, is one of the most intimate things that one human being can do. It is a level of intimacy that some people just cannot attain. It requires a certain fearlessness and courage. I look back on some of the things I’ve written over the years and the level of intimacy captured inside the writing astounds me. It is that intimacy in writing that reaches our emotional core. It is that intimacy that makes the great poets like Pablo Neruda, Frank O’Hara, and Ted Hughes so emotionally powerful. They write with an intimacy that reaches off the page and pulls you into a tight embrace, pulls you right through space and time into that perfect moment they captured. When I can touch the palest shadow of that intimacy with my own writing I feel transformed. Not only am I transformed, my world is transformed. My soul is on fire and I am fully within the floating world.
(1)Ukiyo or “The Floating World”
“Usually the word “Ukiyo” is literally translated as “floating world” in English, referring to a conception of a evanescent world, impermanence, fleeting beauty and a realm of entertainments (kabuki, courtesans, geishas) divorced from the responsibilities of the mundane, everyday world.
The contemporary novelist Asai Ryoi, in his Ukiyo Monogatari (Tales of the Floating World, 1661) provides some insight into the concept of the floating world:
…Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves just floating, floating….refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current; this is what we call the floating world…””
“Ukiyo-e”, Wikipedia.com, Last Updated March 31, 2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e
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