It’s not so much that I don’t have time to write (although I feel like I don’t, at the moment). It’s that I don’t feel any desire or urge to write, and that makes me sad. It feels like I’m losing part of my identity.
So I find myself resorting to the theft of other people’s words. Here are some from Gabriel Marcel’s essay, “On the Ontological Mystery.” (And no, I’m not as erudite as one would expect someone to be who quotes from essays on ontological mysteries. I lifted the words from a book I’m reading titled At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails. You can probably guess which aspect of that title most attracted non-erudite me.)
I know by my own experience how, from a stranger met by chance, there may come an irresistible appeal which overturns the habitual perspectives just as a gust of wind might tumble down the panels of a stage set — what had seemed near becomes infinitely remote and what had seemed distant seems to be close.
I hear you about not wanting to write and losing one's identity.
ReplyDeleteOh Helen, you could write about writing the phone book and it would be entertaining.
ReplyDeleteWhat Mali said.
ReplyDeleteYes, what Mali said.
ReplyDeleteAnd oooh, apricot cocktails! Oh wait--I don't drink anymore. Shit.