Last week, while I was on vacation, I realized that there is a cruel Catch 22 of writing. When I have time and space to let my mind wander, suddenly there’s so much to write about. Every day last week I’d find myself composing little vignettes and wishing I’d brought my paper diary so I could write them down (since I didn’t go online very much while on vacation, so blogging was mostly out of the question).
Now I’m back in the midst of life (and back online), but the little narratives I’d composed have either flown out of my head or seem like more work than they’re worth to write down.
I somewhere in the middle of the six-hour car ride, I thought it’d be interesting to write about what a good image a courtyard would be if I were a poet. It’s such an enclosed space. A private space where pretending wouldn’t be necessary. But an inherently fictional space where everything is a pretence because that little patch of privacy, greenery, and seclusion was built for the express purpose of blocking out life outside of the building. But I’m not a poet.
I could have described the cascade of video cassettes that rained down on the cat after he jumped up on a shelf he shouldn’t have jumped up onto… and how they were still falling when he was half a house away and running at full tilt, and how he hid under the bed for half the day, and shied away from the room that bit him for the rest of the vacation.
But now there’s too much to do and ponder during the day, and somehow writing carefully and thoughtfully feels like work rather than fun.
So there you have it, I can either have the time and space to concoct ideas to write about, or I can have access to writing implements. Unfortunately, unless I miraculously become independently wealthy, rarely the twain shall meet.