That Was Yesterday

 There was nothing left but sawdust and some glitter...

I’ve been staring at this blank page for three weeks now. My fingers work perfectly (that is, as perfectly as they can for a life lived ramming my knuckles into things that didn’t bear ramming into), and my command of the English language is adequate for the task at hand. Computer’s running fine. I have a 32 inch monitor. Just gotta put that flow through the old digits.

Nothing wants to come out.  Dry as a bone over here. For three weeks straight.

Ack-chully, that’s not 100% accurate. There’s a LOT of stuff that WANTS to come out, but I’m seriously trying to refrain from using “Fuck” more than I use “The”. It’s harder than you think.

Do you know what’s so difficult about evolving? I’m speaking of emotional evolution here, the kind of personal growth that happens so rarely under pleasant circumstances.  You really WANT to hang on to that simpler form, that limp skin you just shed. It was a comfortable coat when you needed it, and if this is your first evolution (the saying is that we change at least five times in life – on average. Some more, some less. Some not at all.), then you’ll be much more inclined to try to hang on to that older form. It still kinda fits. It’s warm, and familiar. It’s what everyone knows and loves.

It has memories, dammit.

Yeah, well – it’s still an outgrown coat. You can keep the memories, but trying to actually wear the coat will do nothing to warm or protect you, and it will make you look ridiculous. Evolving out of trauma seems to lend itself to a harshness of existence as well – ask any rape victim. We so rarely learn life lessons under blue skies and sunny days. There is so much I just don’t find funny anymore.

Alternatively, it’s the captain who’s lived through a typhoon at sea you want piloting your yacht. That salty, bitter bastard might not be pleasant company in a tearoom, but he’ll be the one who handles the lines when the wind kicks up. 

I remember the months leading up to my surgery in India, I thought once I could walk again, everything else would just fall into place. I’d get up, start working out, and be the old Bobbe again. The first two happened in one month, that last one...I was going to say the jury's still out, but that's not really true. I'm starting to think I need a new set of personality by-laws, my previous set doesn't seem to apply anymore. I'm just not me anymore.

Every day for the past year, I’ve gotten up and looked in the mirror for that goofy, wise-assed Robin Goodfellow with the acerbic tongue…and every day, he’s not there. I'm starting to think he’s never coming back. Remember that guy who wrote the classic treatise on “Catcher in the Rye”, which has been taught (with edits) in high schools and used (with permission) by seniors in their dissertations? Remember my rant on nuking the moon, or the Unreality shows? Or how about that review of Ghost Rider? All the racist jokes, flaunted so unabashedly? Good times, good times.

Thing is, I just can’t write like that anymore, try as I might. And believe me, I have tried.

I’m still working out what it is I became after crawling out of the cocoon. I mean, I don’t feel some socio/psychopathic need to start pulling the wings off flies, or walking into a McDonald’s and spraying some pimply-faced kid’s brains all over the McFlurries Machine. Well – not more than usual, anyway.

There’s a lot to be said for growth, change and evolution in a person. Lotta “yea” arguments out there, but I think it should come with a caveat as well; Fools rush in. If you haven’t ever considered what life would be like if you chose to suddenly live contrary to how you’ve always lived in the past (as I write it, I realize just how impossible it is to even fathom such a thing), you will find yourself lost and grasping and mist for a while.

It’s a bewildering time until you get your bearings. In trying to grasp at the familiar, you also tend to make familiar mistakes, because that’s what you *know*.  See, it’s no longer about “thinking” outside the box – you, my friend, are indeed isolated outside the damn thing, and the door only swings one-way.

750 words in the above post, and I still have nothing to write. Anyone want to get a beer this Friday? I’m sick of staying in the house, my writers’ block isn’t going anywhere, and I could really use a drink.