Writing from the grotto.

My experience of writing this blog is markedly different from what it was not so long ago.  No more am I writing in order to breathe, writing with an intense urgency that can’t be contained; now I’m writing in a slow, bedraggled, wincing way.  I’ve gone from stumbling around shadowy forests and hanging out on cliff edges to climbing into a hollow log or perhaps retiring to a subterranean grotto.  Poking my hand out in order to write public missives feels onerous.  I’m not sure I have anything of value to say.

I miss the momentum I had before, even if (or perhaps because?) it felt like it was careening and dangerous.  Sure enough, however, there was a denouement in this particular chapter of my life, a painful one, and I’m still hunting around on the ground for all the little shards that won’t quite fit together any more.

I miss stringing words together to create my own tight-rope.  I miss the air at the top of the mountain.  I miss that feeling of holy shit, even if I feel blazingly naked and vulnerable writing in this way, I have to do it–there is no other choice.  I miss the feeling of even though I care too much what people think, I have to risk alienating them all in order to have an authentic voice.

Where am I now?  What is this grotto I find myself in?  What is there to see, or say, in this dark, damp, silent place?

What I don’t want is to return to a way of being in which torpor reigns.  My mind and body become overwhelmed, overstimulated, and I can observe them scurrying away, retreating, seeking the only method they know to get relief.  It’s not a truly restful sort of thing, not a deep exhalation, not rejuvenating.  In fact, it’s exhausting and wretched.

I wish I knew of a way to genuinely rest.  Maybe a lobotomy would help.