What shall I do tomorrow?

I have crawled inside volcanoes, immersed myself in lava, and felt heat so hot it melted my ancestors’ bones. I have napped atop fluffy clouds high in the sky. I have worn red to pet bulls named Willard. I have discussed politics with ogres over coffee and beignets. I have surfed lakes with frogs on lily pads.

I spent today riding a butterfly’s wing. I perched cross-legged on a black dot on an azure blue wing that glowed in the sun, a speck so tiny the butterfly didn’t even know I was there. I managed to hang on through the movement of the butterfly’s wings.

A dog snapped at us. We narrowly avoided getting smashed under a human’s shoe.

We swooped through the air, riding the wind, soaring up and down. I flung my arms up and grinned at the sun.  I looked in windows as we passed.

A couple kissed, wrapped up in each other’s arms, so that it was impossible to tell where each began.

“I love you,” the man whispered.

In the next window a couple was shouting, enraged, red in the face, their arms flailing wildly.

“I hate you,” the woman screamed.

We joined a brilliantly colored swarm of butterflies on a bus, fluttering around a woman’s head. She kept talking to us. No one else seemed to notice the butterflies. We left the bus at the next stop, gladly escaping back out into the open.

The butterfly hung in the air, seemingly motionless, and I floated on a blue wing in a crystal clear matching sky. The only sound was the flap of the butterfly’s wings and the thud of my heartbeat. Time stuttered to a standstill.

 

The butterfly is gone now. They don’t live long anyway.

What shall I do tomorrow?

 

 

 

Writer's Block

“Oh, you write?” you ask. “What do you write?” you ask.

“You’d have to read my blog, I guess,” I say.

I’ve shown you this blog. You read half of the post on rugby, and the Seeing Stars on the Inside of My Eyelids piece.

“Nice poem,” you said.

“What do you write?” you ask.

(Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried around to her)*

I shrug. I write snippets. I like to experiment right now. Words are fun to play with. They s-t-r-e—t---c---h. They shatter into a jumble, are picked up, and put back gthetroe in different ways.  They bounce,

fast: (rat tat tat)

and slow:

bang,

bang,

bang.

I want to create a thousand metaphors and throw them up into the sky with the stars. I want to count dust.

“What do you write?” you ask.

I don’t know.

For my words to truly travel (hey Germany, Ireland, everybody!) , to fly, to struggle through security rigmaroles at airports, to shake strangers by the hand, and see the seven wonders of the world; they will have to conform, to have a plot, to pirouette to a denouement, to walk in iambic pentameter through scenes.

Lately there’s been a wall sitting in front of me. I keep running into it face first, over and over again. It is made up of blocks of questions and self-doubts (are my ideas fresh, am I any good at this, does anybody really want to read this, isn’t this just for me anyway) and required dry, boring papers for school, stacked up and towering over me. On this wall is spray painted a Basquiat graffiti stating “WRITER’S BLOCK”. It is not signed Samo.

The grass has to be greener on the other side.

I want to just peek over, see the view over the wall. But it’s impossible to climb. At times there are footholds (another assignment’s done) but then it smooths out so that I slide back down to the ground. The ground is muddy, slippery, and turns into quicksand quickly. The ground near the wall is dangerous: I step on it, it sucks my foot in, and I struggle not to be tugged under and disappear. This ground could suck the entire world into a quagmire of environmental problems, overpopulation, inequality, and royal babies.  The world is not on my shoulders: I pick it up and hurl it back into rotation around the sun. Day comes again.

The grass has to be greener on the other side (my pony’s name was Bunny, for the record).

“What do you write?” you ask.

I write this.

 

 

 

 

*From Austen, J. (original 1818, 1984) Persuasion. USA, Canada: Bantam Books.