Dr its a strange Love

or I how learnt to stop worrying and love .......

writing.

Writing-she’s got me; I have the sickness and am not sure what to do with it. Part of me wants this life of spending time in coffee shops and log cabins and small rooms with desks. Having time for people and place and knowing what it is to live that life more abundant. It means rejecting the dominant paradigm of middle class existence, a secure income and all those oh so lovely benefits that come with full time employment. And part of me is scared. Scared because she is a harsh mistress – demanding time and attention and loving. She demands it every day, and that’s the test – she demands it on the days when you don’t love her, when you cant feel any inspiration, when the dryness inside sits there and mocks you, and your inner voice laughs at your pretensions of sharing your thoughts and dreams with the world. Even on those days you have to tend to her. It’s a calling, a curse as much as a blessing and not to be entered into lightly. If you take her on, your life will change and she will hound you with her demands. She will expect gold and diamonds and precious things from you. And that’s ok, because some days the Oran Mor – the rhythm of life is there – you can taste the wind, sense the rain, breathe with the trees and for a few seconds you grasp that divine beauty and you try to put it into words. A few pitiful words that don’t do justice to the vision that you had. You write through a glass darkly but there is still a hint, a scent of Eden and what was lost all those years ago.
She also demands something even more precious, and that’s time. She wants some of your day every day, she expects the best years of your life. And here’s the hardest part, she promises nothing in return. Not success, not even fulfilment, hell not even publishing of your pitiful efforts. Aye Hamlet there’s the rub.
Why do it? Why quit your job and lock yourself away from society to follow this insubstantial dream, this ethereal hope, which may turn out to be no more lasting than a fart in the wind. Simply put you don’t have a choice. It’s like falling in love. You can’t help it; you can not turn of the attraction, even when it’s the wrong choice. And he hasn’t lived who hasn’t made the wrong choice in love and suffered for it. Hell I’m still doing that and its like my old professor used to say – “the only thing we learn from history, is that we don’t learn from history.”
There is only one thing to be done and that’s to untie yourself from the mast, dive into the raging torrent and swim towards that siren. I’m not saying you wont drown, in fact that’s the most likely outcome, and even if you reach the island who’s to say you wont get smashed to pieces on the rocks. Ultimately the only way to stop that seductive chorus is to swim towards it.
This will be my last blog posting for a couple of weeks as I’m going into a wilderness so wild it is without internet. I’m heading off to a remote cabin in the woods to wrestle with the bitch and see if we can’t produce something beautiful together. Some days I will win and some days she will kick my ass. I may drown yet so if you haven’t heard from me by the start of March, please, please send out a search party.