State Shift

Before I set about writing this, I looked up and around me in desperate attempt to find the words I wanted. Pining for them tends to fail in yielding ample fruit. If any fruit is found, the pickings are slim and of poor taste. Fruit is fruit, though. If I am starving for artistic nutrients then surely I cannot be so choosy. Yet here I find myself, opting rather to starve.

Eating the bland fruit means compromising on some weird promise I made to my artistic endeavors. It means foregoing the presentation of what I deem top of the line in favor of writing “just because.” The thought is repulsive. 

My standards paralyze my hand when pen hits paper. I leave the page with three words scrawled in a feeble attempt to create something worth a display. 

I’m attempting to override my own predispositions with this entry. So far, as you can surely tell, I have done little more beyond fluff. Sticking to it, putting word after word down on this screen, is an attempted override of my own standards. 

Writing in this mindset turns the pastime into an untouchable craft. It sits too high for me to reach. Eventually I stop trying to reach for it. The urge to create remains but the will to do it settles into the background, camouflaged with the rest of the clutter. I turn my back on the underripe yield of an idea. Time passes and before I’m aware, the idea is a rotten, unusable mess. I had only meant for days to pass. Not weeks.

Not months.

Time slips through my fingers like streams of fine sand. I look down to see the amount left in my palm is leagues lesser than before. I blink and goals, ideas, intentions, become forgotten dreams. Once so defined, now a whisper in the wind.

Time moves forward and I am stuck with one reluctant hand outstretched. I am stuck to watch the time slip between fingers to settle the earth, never to be disturbed again. I’m entrenched in this idea and have been for long. Upon my itch to escape, I was reminded of perspective.

Yes, perspective. It’s a funny thing, that.

The term goes about defining what I often forget. Life, its passage and all the details in between are up for individual interpretation. To witness life with despair will translate into a despairing life lived. An active shift from pining for symbolism to creating it could change Temporality’s great tragedy into a triumph. With a proper will, an unattainable art becomes natural again.

State shifts are hard to do. Harder still to invoke with long-term dedication. I cannot say for how long I have been stuck in my cycle of stagnation. A few months now is my best guess. Words find the page to be deleted–if ever they are to find a page at all. My hope is to end this particular dry spell by forcing streams of consciousness out through my fingertips. 

I’m certain the result of this will be haphazard and messy. In time, perhaps, the adversity I carry towards the task will fade just as many of my old ideas did. I wonder how I will perceive it then; this craft that called to me from childhood. I wonder if the rivers of thought will flow smoothly with continued pursuit. If my words will live up to me, the present impostor. 

State shifts are hard to do. But without one, the dry spell becomes a drought. Once-fertile fields die. And I, ever so reluctant to tend to bland fruit, will wither away. 

I say to certain fate, “no” and bring it to an end.