It's happened again. That weird collision of unrelated events that leaves me emotionally spent and wishing my brain would shut down or go into energy saver mode for awhile. Lousy sleep, lousy appetite. Just getting through is the goal with little fun along the way.
It's not a guaranteed thing, but writing works sometimes and it worked wonderfully for me this morning. Not this writing. Lock box stuff where I just pull my thumb out of the dike, step back and try not to get my good shoes wet. It gushes for several unrestrained paragraphs and then, like a miracle drug kicking in, I'm all better.
How's that work?
One reason may be that what needs to be said gets said. That's not the same thing as saying it to anybody in particular or being read by any eyes but mine. It just needed to get out of the narrow confines of my mind. Liking it to pent up autumn sap gushing from the bored hole in a tree trunk may be a descriptive and folksy analogy, but I don't see how it's helpful in this case.
Maybe writing is like a marker in time that says, "I passed this way once", adding some permanence. The permanence is followed by a sort of low level validity. Not real, tested validity. Not universal truth, just my truth and most of the time that's all that is needed. I suppose a lot of rubbish has been printed and passed on that was the kind of thing that is true within the very small arena of one mind and should have been kept there and at most, pulled out occasionally, hummed over and put back again.
Like the Trappists and other cloistered types, I think manual labor also helps the disordered mind. They say it clears the mind by diverting it. Like restocking the shelves when you aren't looking it's a kind of spiritual slight of hand. But it's hot out today, my yard looks just fine, the car is clean and, anyway, I'm feeling a lot better now.
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