I’ve been having a hard time thinking this week.
This isn’t the real essay. This is a placeholder. The real essay is incomplete, pending a time when I can think, and pay attention, and construct a spine and ribcage to hold the bleeding guts of words. Actually I never expected it to be done for today, since it’s actually fairly ambitious and this is, again, not my week.
It’s so frustrating.
I live in my head. It’s like being snowed in. It’s not impossible to think, there’s just resistance, and I get tired, and sleepy, and I lose my place. And even though everything in my experience tells me that this is temporary, I’m still a bit afraid that I’m just dumb now. Even though I think intelligence is as much a mood and set of skills as an inherent attribute, I feel like I’ve lost it. Even though I can express myself reasonably well in words, right here, right now, it’s because those words are shaped from a feeling close to the surface of my mind’s sea, and everything below that is thickened into frozen chunks.
So that’s what that feels like.
As long as I try. As long as I keep working, even if I can’t work as much, even if I can’t work as cleverly, I can make some kind of progress. That progress may not be the straight path I envisioned, but it’s better than being stationary. Even if it takes me in the wrong direction entirely, it’s better than being stationary. Things that stop moving have a hard time starting again. I stopped moving once, and I don’t want to let it happen again.
In lieu of cogent philosophical thought, here’s an electronic music piece I wrote in the last few days of February. I think it’s pretty good. Enjoy.