this i know to be true: that the best days are those that begin with words. as with exercise, long stretches without writing leaves me brimming with pent-up energy, gassed up with nowhere to go, feeling unheard, unheard by my own self. this might all be an excuse for my short fuse. it’s not like i didn’t lose my temper in the spring when my mornings were consistently filled with prose and poems. but “quelled” might be a good word for this, i’ll have to look up the definition later (one of the many manifestations of the liberation i feel when i write is the cavalier use of terms whose etymologies i’m quite sure never expected someone like me to try on for size).
subdue, silence, suppress…nm, i googled it and “quell” isn’t the right word. consoled, perhaps? refuge, if refuge was a verb and it didn’t carry with it the sociopolitical context that suggests my use of it belittles someone’s lived experience? clearly, i’m caught up in what others might think. it’s been like that all my life, but has been heightened ever since the protests began, when “if you’re not talking about this then you ain’t talking about shit” sank into my chest. it’s not that i wish it were any different, these things i’m processing. to identify as a writer is to accept that my crafting of sentences, especially when made public, are supposed to mean something, that it’s not just for play. who are you to say anything right now is the mantra that nobody in particular other than myself has drilled into me each morning since the start of june. it is daunting but necessary. i’d rather the reason i avoid writing be because of this, and not for lack of time, or energy, or will, which may describe how i reflect on my past years gone dark.
maybe i’m asking too much of myself, but i believe that to strive for excellence is to reach a point where even my most careless, vapid responses to any given moment can still serve to benefit someone or something. i know that this isn’t what’s recommended of the artist’s way, that to commit to pervasive fruitfulness can appear as a clear path toward becoming withered and dry. the notion of morning pages is to just let it all out without judgement. but what if not-judging is actually the hard part? one of the main reasons i haven’t been writing as much lately is because i can’t approach the page without judgement, even if i know it’ll be private, i’ll know what i said or didn’t say that day.
i guess this is all healthy, in its own way. i was getting too bold, feeling too confident that every breath would blossom into something. but the terrain is ever-shifting. i am accepting this as a moment to find new footing.