I have sat here for three hours now, wondering why no word seems to click and no sentence begins to form. First, I thought that I had lost the nerve, that I had drunk the last drop from the well, and maybe, the pond was dried up. But then, I realised that a thought had been stuck for a while now, and the gears had finally come to a halt. Now, I have to dislodge it somehow, and I do not know where to begin. A few days ago, in a conversation about nothing in particular, I told a friend that strong emotion is what we need to write. Anger, grief and love are the usual suspects, and I seem to have none. I seem to have lost all my anger, for I realised it was grief, and all that grief in the past has made me too cautious about love.
All in all, mellow emotion can only take me so far, and it is not for the lack of trying. I try to open my heart, but it is futile; the key is lost, and I do not know where to begin my search. I have retraced all my steps, and I cannot find it. How easy it is to write about someone you love! Like magic, the words flow out of you. It has been a while since I experienced this, and it was not a problem until I did not say it aloud. Now, I have; it has but paralysed me. All my emotion is mellow, like this ever-present cup of coffee on this table. Nothing has ripped my heart to shreds recently—no love and surely, no grief. And while the world has plenty of reasons ready to fuel my rage, my patience makes it impossible for me to feel any flavour of it. In the end, these words suffer for all of it.
How long can one write about the seasons, their changing, and about people they do not know? How long can we talk of the world that does not know of us, that thinks of us like a statistic, a number among many? How long can we speak of joy without being able to share it outside our words? I see a sort of indifference growing within me. I do not know if I can write much longer if things continue this way. For the first time in my life, I am unsure. Perhaps, all things reach the end of the line one way or the other or, often, for reasons beyond our control.