On All Fours

Sometimes I feel like I have manacles on my feet.

Every step hurts, pushing forward, breathe, breathe, breathe, OK one inch forward, maybe two inches today? So it's half five in the morning and I've finished another section. It killed me to do this and I wonder, why? I am an experienced journalist and I know how to write on demand, hell, how many times before have I written on demand?

It's just that this project is so vast and cavernous and unwieldy. I fall on all-fours and crawl forward. Little by little. Laying track as Julia Cameron calls it.

Deadline come and gone. I don't hear from the person who is supposed to be overseeing all this. He's decided to go silent again.

Never mind.

Crawl a little further. Push a little dirt out of the way.

Move forward.

Just a little today.

OK, little more.

And now, a little more again.

Coming up with tricks to fool myself into writing. There is a blank wall up in front of me. The blank wall is me. The blank wall is my monumental indifference. The blank wall is my fear. I am trying to push past the blank wall. The blank wall is impervious to my fists.

My fists are bleeding. The blank wall is indifferent to my pain. It is deaf. It doesn't hear me screaming. I don't hear me screaming. Except inside my head. Inside my head I'm loud. Inside my head I'm unbearable. Inside my head I cannot find the black hole to disappear into.

Inside my head is a rattling gourd.

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

But the sounds have no meaning.

I want to sleep now.

No more coffee for naughty Jenny.