Walls

I'm noticing this morning the beginnings of that dreaded feeling of malaise and indirection. It's important for me to focus myself on specific creative tasks. Otherwise, I can fall back into my most wretched and pathetically ordinary habits - mostly involving food, vodka and the internet. If there is one thing I feel that I must do this year, it's change my basic routine. I worked yesterday. I made tiny bits of progress on a number of poems. No breakthroughs.

On days like that it feels like I am tapping a stone wall with a hammer. Not pounding fiercely, just tapping. As I do this, little strategic fishers begin to appear. I tap and tap, day after day. Then finally, after the wall has been covered with a spider's web of hairline fractures, I apply one firm blow, and the wall comes tumbling down. Only, of course, to reveal another wall. I start tapping anew.

Hope.