You know those times you stare distractedly at the screen - unsure if you've arrived in the day after tomorrow or are still in the one before yesterday - the bright light straining concentration out of your eyes while their corners remain alert regardless on acknowledging every tireless blink of the cursor, that ever-living line that wills once every reincarnation for your brain to explode with intelligent matter and connect magically through a stream of eloquent articulation to your fingers to translate them into the words and ideas you come up with? You fuss, instead, for days on end over work that, if produced at all, is not satisfactory, because you want to say something of worth, not churn material for the sake of it. So you chase it like mist in the night, knowing that is it impossible, and necessary. By now, your body feels like the shell that it is - light and hollow, and running purely on a rotation of adrenaline, will power, and caffeine.
And then, you find that that imp. That combination of inspiration and nail on head, and the pretty, dewy cobwebs that hold it all together. The mischevious thing that you chase in loops and lets, daringly, you almost grab the shirt on its back on occasion for the thrill of it. The one you've worked your days, life and eating habits around to the point you're unsure if occasion spells with one c or two, and only one s or more, or double for both because, really, the options are many. The one that reminds you with its taunting twists and turns how near but far you are to the end that you can smell, taste, touch it - just not have - until you outwit it, finally, possess total hold of its twisting vapours as the sun is absorbed into the horizon for the eighth day now, and so you release the little devil, at your control, one smooth bit at a time so your mind is fluid, your fingers flowing, and every word and idea you need to write pours forth, rich and easy as honey. Everything comes together, so quickly and so well you cannot type fast enough nor dare you stop, you must get everything down at all cost. A little voice at the back of your brain even says in her smiley voice while your fingers hit the keys surely, boldly, that you have so much material you're going to have to cull it. Nothing can stop you - you can even think at different levels about different things at the once - and you keep typing while that voice now notes the happy problem of having too much.
Fantastically, bizarrely, your brain freezes and you blink. Or perhaps the screen blacks out and then you freeze and blink. All you know is now a blank.
Work through the denial, blame, anger, acceptance, it doesn't matter. The reality that nothing is retrievable sits glumly in your lap, and tears and tantrums aside, you have nothing.
This crushing disappointment is how I feel, having thought after thought after thought swim freely in my head, each an evil scientist plotting to overtake me. They're so vicious they are sharks circling my brain, which is prey. Only, they don't just attack and be done with it. They torment ceaselessly, probing and prodding, and I often will them to come together as a patchwork quilt, if not a neat jigsaw, to give me rest. Make no mistake, I'm no advocate for any kind of patchwork: they're far too happy and mismatched for me. I was never a fan of kitsch, anyway. And I've certainly lost my taste for jigsaws. But I need some organization. Already those torturous self-growing thoughts are given, and now I cannot fit them neatly into boxes for some semblance of order, or lum them together to produce some kind of meaning, some kind of value.
If you've read thus far, you see what I mean. I haven't even yet mentioned those thoughts which mushroom fertilely inside and I'm already shooting myself in the foot. Either I need saving from myself, or I'm mixing with the wrong crowd and feeling needlessly misunderstood. Perhaps both.
