If a butcher’s block is where a butcher butches, is a writer’s block where a writer writes?
a demon likes to play with blocks
You are a writer, but you can’t write. That’s writer’s block. There are likely many causes, everything from not really wanting to write to the perfectionist’s perpetual dissatisfaction with the product to fear of the blank page. There have certainly been occasions when I am to produce some particular kind of writing, usually on a specific subject, and I just can’t. There have been times I’ve tried to write about incidents in my life, for instance, and I’ve either lost interest or haven’t been able to figure out the right way to talk about them. So I don’t say writer’s block is unknown to me. I might be experiencing it with this Heart Demons essay.
There are certainly things I can talk about. Some of them are difficult.
I am sitting at the dining table, writing on the Apple laptop. I can hear workers at the apartment building next door; I think there’s sanding involved or buffing, the whine of power tools. I can hear the TV in the next room where Kent, my husband, is watching something, his empty wheelchair parked at the doorway. The wheelchair looks new, but the tires are aging badly now, more crumbs of black rubber dropping to the wood floor each day. The wind picks up outside, trees wobbling, limbs rising and subsiding.
In the sliver of San Francisco I see from my Berkeley window I am able to identify one skyscraper, the TransAmerica Pyramid. When my brother, David, was here earlier this month, I pointed it out to him. He couldn’t see it, he said. You have to look between two of the heavy cables that swing between telephone poles. You have to look between two tall trees, one on this block, one on the block to the south. You have to look above two roofs, one tiled in gray, one in brick red. Today the sky is pale blue, especially at the horizon where the tip of the pyramid pokes into it. I took a picture on my iPhone and did the finger and thumb spread until the pyramid was big and centered. David said, “I saw that, but I was looking for something less spiky.”
A few other buildings less tall are visible. I know nothing about them. The whole view disappears when the fog comes in, but even then I can sometimes make out the TransAmerica Pyramid. If that’s what it really is. But what else? When I’ve walked up Cedar Street, the view broadening with each step, I’ve felt confirmed in my guess.
Two crows just flew from east to west, their shadows briefly stroking the roof next door. We feed peanuts to a mated pair of scrub jays. Not sure where they nest. Across Cedar? The jays hide most of the peanuts we give them — thus they prefer the peanuts still in their shells. A peanut without the shell has to be eaten right away. Crows will walk along the roof, peering into the gutters, the gutters being a favorite caching place for the jays. I have yet to actually see a crow find a nut, but I’m sure they have.
Even though I have writer’s block, I am writing, aren’t I? I am writing around the things I don’t know how to talk about by writing about the things in front of me. There’s a glass on the table half full of water. My cell phone rests on a cloth napkin with frayed hems. A bottle of hot sauce. Another. A pepper shaker with a grinder top and peppercorns inside. A bottle of olive oil, which my sister, Bernice, chuckled at. She’s been to culinary school and her teachers, she knows, would not recommend “a global blend of oils from Argentina, Portugal, Chile, and California.” At my left elbow is a stack of papers that have claims on my attention — from to-do lists to a book I want to comment on for my Dare I Read blog to the stub of a refund check. The check is from Kaiser Permanente. It seems Kent or I handed over a credit card to take care of a co-pay. Kaiser billing recognized that our insurance covered that. So they sent a refund for $35. Oddly, Kaiser has sent me an email this week saying I owe them $35. At first I thought it was a phishing email. I would like to talk to someone about this bill. That is, in theory I’d like to talk to someone about this bill. I would prefer to ignore it.
Medical stuff. There’s been a lot of that in the last year. I don’t know if I want to talk about it. But if I don’t you’ll think I’m teasing you. We had a recent scare. Kent experienced a seizure. His language took a hit. At first the words that came out of his mouth were nonsense syllables. Words said to him apparently also sounded like nonsense. But Kent’s mind was working. He remembers trying to figure out what was going on, why friends, a nurse, were suddenly in his bedroom. He has no memory of the seizure. A brain experiencing a seizure is not making memories. Kent is now on anti-seizure medicine and he has recovered language. We are back to playing word games, Wordle, the New York Times Crossword. The days lately have been rather ordinary. Eating, watching TV, hanging out, taking care of what needs doing. I don’t know what tomorrow will be like. Rather like today, I expect. One never really knows what tomorrow will be like. It tends to be rather like today. Kent’s oncologists have talked ominously about what is to come. Ordinary is okay, then. I can live in ordinary days.
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Two publications have included my poems this month:
I think the term writer's block inclines us towards us thinking that there's writing that needs to be done that's being impeded by some force when the simple answer is we have nothing that's ready to be written about, that HAS to be written about. Processing takes time, longer, often, than we'd like. Perspective is all about distance. Of course, I've no sooner typed those words than I've come up with a couple of good examples of poems written in the moment because there will always be exceptions to the… now, I want to write "rule" but I don't really see this as a "rule" situation, more of a "whim" situation. You have, without a doubt, a ton of "material" going on right now—and I'm sorry the two of you are having a rough time—and it would be nice is all that pain could find its way into a meaningful work of art. It's a good way to cope with life's arbritrariness, to impose meaning on it. But then, as I wrote in a wee poem, recently, not everything belongs in a poem although most anything can be made to fit with a bit of brute force. As you know I'm having a bit of a… what's the opposite of dry spell? wet spell?… but I'm still not in control. The poems come, I write 'em down, claim authorship but don't always feel like they had much to do with me. The poems I want to write will likely never see the light of day. We write what we're capable of.
Dear Glenn. This is such a heart felt piece. Not entirely on writer's block. I can read between the lines, until you make it clear, Your beloved Kent. Hints at the wheel chair. The word, oncologist. In my house we're also further along the oncology road with a brother in law who is soon to breathe his last. A long story but when there's a death in your family, everyone goes on high alert. And cancer is one of those events that signal our eventual endings. I read so many stories these days of that journey. No doubt related to my age. The older you get the more it screams at you, it's coming. Such a lovely piece of writing here. It reminds me of Julian Barnes beautiful novel Flaubert's Parrot. May your journey together be gentle.