Writing About Writing

           

Usually I am pretty good at insights and epiphanies.  I have them almost on a daily basis.  And not just one, mind you.  Usually they happen in the morning, as I drink my Turkish coffee.  My brain must be waking up and gearing with hope and optimism for the day I am about to face.  So it seems only natural that I will have an insight. 

             

Having an epiphany (and I will use insight and epiphany interchangeably) is a great feeling.  I am sure you know it: it is like a happy drug which makes you move in a spiral that is connected to the great consciousness of the Universe.  I am not trying to be cynical, Scout’s honor (or in my case Tito’s Pioneer’s Honor) because sometimes this expansion of consciousness can be truly authentic.  You’re not just on a bus with Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters. 

             

But when you’re having one epiphany after another, the ever unfolding spiral of the Universe looks more like a repetitive circle and you’re running around in while you talk and begin every sentence with “I just realized” or “Recently I realized” or the most popular and by association most destructive “I finally realized…” 

             

I haven’t written anything in two months.  I lie.  I have written some things: “tomatoes, potatoes, basil, mozzarella, parsley, cilantro, oat bran (gotta keep regular – just because your mind is constipated does not mean your digestive system should also suffer the same fate), ginger tea, jasmine tea, fish (“God, I hope this time it’s actually wild-caught and I won’t be eating baked potting soil”), cheese (but not too much because you want to avoid that whole constipation problem), sour cream, organic chicken, organic ground beef, milk, eggs, tuna, fruit, pasta, rice, cat food, weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal” (which in advance you know that you will most likely not read the entire thing but it makes you look both informed and cultured at the cash register.  The New York Times will reveal that you’re drinking Kool-Aid). 

So now you know my grocery list and you can kind of extrapolate what kind of recipes I make.  You have just written a grocery list and it was so easy and maybe even a little bit fun so you think to yourself “hmm…maybe I should list my insights and see if I can apply them.”  But the list only intensifies the problem because then you actually have to sit down and try to apply the epiphanies into what we might call “the real life.”  Just as the grocery list is only as good as the trip to the grocery store, so is the insight list only as good as the active change in habits.

The problem with not being able to write is not merely practical but also existential.  The problem is fear.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of whether you’re saying something the “right way.”  Fear that nobody will read what you wrote.  My sense of Bosnian levity does not permit me to believe in this Kierkegaardian, self-reflective nonsense.  To be sure, the Bosnian mind reflects but it is also practical in the reflecting process.  The Bosnian mind gets things done quickly (including brooding) and moves on.

        

My sense of inherent melancholia welcomes the existential dread because that also involves the creation of a comfortable and cozy and warm fantasy that in order to be a writer, you have to be melancholic.  As if I actually have to choose to have dread – it follows me no matter what. 

             

When you’re trying to write a book, you compare your own puny muscles and artistic inadequacies to the great writers of the past or present.  “Look how they write!  Look how perfectly their sentences fit together!  If only I could do that!”  Nevermind that everyone writes a shitty first draft and that the real writing is rewriting.  Well, at least I tell myself this, because frankly, I don’t want to be confronted by some artistic genius who sits down and writes a book in twelve days. 

            

I don’t have any insights today – a rare occasion.  And I don’t have any lists either.  No quotes from other writers.  I am alone.  Just with my own insight-less thoughts. And stillness. It’s a cloudy day, November chill in the air – a time when dampness gets into your bones.  Not particularly pleasant or fun but still part of the life toil.  The good thing is that you don’t have to come up with any brilliant idea today, or try to save the world.  “There is nothing new under the sun,” so you might as well just do your “thing” and try to enjoy it, even a little bit.

             

Wait a second!  Was that an insight I just wrote?