Alright. So I told people to leave me alone for a few hours today, and sat down to write. I haven't written in weeks, and I was beginning to feel cross and unfocused, which I do when I don't write for a while. I cleared my head, put on a little writing music in the background, and poised in front of the keyboard. I couldn't write. I tried. I've never not been able to write. I couldn't come up with anything. I opened up some old stuff and dicked around with it for a while, but I was writing shit. Absolute garbage. I couldn't beleive it. I've always had something to say, always needed to get stuff out, especially when I feel the _need_ to write like I've been feeling all day. And nothing. Nothing came out. I don't know what to do. I feel...I don't know..decieved somehow. That, and in shock. And sad. Like I've lost something. I know that I will be able to write again, but at the moment I'm too grief-stricken to think straight. What _am_ I going to do?

Annie Dillard says that your creative resources are like well-springs: you can take all you can out of them, and they will always fill up from the bottom. Fear not.

it's just a little hiatus. i do that all the time with art. don't fret, it will come back. i haven't updated my web log in probably two plus weeks. i feel like i have nothing to say.

I know it will come back...but I still feel as though I'm missing a vital part. This is really frustrating. I wanna go cry now. I just--wow. I've never had this happen this badly before. But my writing is like one long dumpster adventure. It's a good thing I don't use pen and paper anymore, I'd have gone through reams of paper with little half-scribbled sentances on them. It's just wierd, because the other day I had such an awesome sentance come into my head that I stopped everything I was doing and wrote it down, just marvelled in it, and when I put it out on the table tonight, it was dead. Lifeless. It had nowhere to go. *sigh*

Good luck Isolde...sorry I have nothing more to offer than that. But I suffer from the same terrifying lack of word nimbleness at times and have not found the cure. Lemme know if you stumble on something less fattening than massive jugs of margaritas. p.s. The margaritas don't make the words flow, they just trick you into thinking you're Hemingway for a pleasant while. But please feel free to experiment anyway.

i can't agree more. i wrote practically an entire book when i was "courting" nico.............i cranked several poems, lyrics and what not a day....i wouldn't say they were great but they had potential, but I haven't really been able write like that again......sometimes, i take really shitty photos or make really shitty prints......its easy to get all down and hard on yurself, but I always find a little in comfort reminding that THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS and its a good thing, keeps me in check, keeps me in focus, and reminds me I am not all that, which in turn oftens spawns some reallt great work.

"I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income-tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead; one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come, the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward; the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends." -Graham Greene "If you do not believe those arguments, what reason is there that you should not treat these new and jolly chronicles of mine with the same reserve, seeing that as a I dictated them I gave no more thought to the matter than you, who were probably drinking at the time, as I was? For I never spent - or wasted - any more - or other - time in the composing of this lordly book, than that fixed for the taking of my bodily refreshment, that is to say for eating and drinking. Indeed, this is the proper time for writing of such high matters and abstruse sciences." - Francois Rabelais

Bleh. But this still doesn't solve my problem. Maybe I'll be able to write when I get back from LA.

When the words do come... remember to save requently. The power just blinked here at work. The entire building swore as one. My machine was one of two computers in my department that actually made it without rebooting. Doesn't sound like any of the programmers made it. Ah, the sound of hundreds of computers running scandisk...

There's something called a UPS...gotta love them. The ones we have usually outlast any outages we get. (Frequent...thanks to some huge thunderstorms)

UPS's would be great.. but it would take either a huge-ass ups, or a whole hell of a lot of them.

Zephyr, I thought you were not going to post today?

zephyr, a day without you is like a day wading through pigshit!

haha! Don't worry. I didn't feel like posting until I ate a *whole* bowl of popcorn! (I'm hungry today!) ::blush:: Thanks Mavis!

zephyr, email me and i will try to send that thing as a reply...... joyce.farr@reed.edu

And if all else fails Zephyr, email me and I will attempt to forward the pics of the mighty purrdy Miss Mavis. Where there's a will, there's a way...this little puter blonde can really fuck up your system!

No worry, cat, the pictures did get through...and yes...MIGHTY pretty!

I want to see pics of mavis......

email me

Great Pics! Thanks

You're a wise man not to take attachments from me, Zephyr. I'm a mad mouse clicker and have no idea what the hell I'm doing 86.9%* of the time. And keep posting Zephyr...a day without you is like hungrily opening the fridge to discover only a skinny dead cockroach. (* according to recent polls conducted by hackers who wandered into my system only to find it more fucked up than NASA's)

cat you are a mad fireball genius! kick ass! zephyr, a day without you is like a day spent hazily wandering through fields and hills covered in delicious bread with not a speck of nutella anywhere!

What the f*ck is nutella?

nutella is a "creamy, chocolatey hazelnut spread" it is wonderful on graham crackers, bread, and um friends.

Stop it! You're making me blush! hehe. Thanks! I assume nutella is some sort of spread, prolly a butter...? Ick. Cockroaches. Story about that...either for here, later, or email me. "I'm a mad mouse clicker and have no idea what the hell I'm doing 86.9%* of the time." Neither do I...that's why I break more than I fix at work...sigh.

:-) Nutella sounds good now...

mmmmm. nutella.... also good on ice cream or a spoon! trace---you seemed rather irritated by nutella before...hee hee i'm glad you've settled down!!!!

Oh Mavis, what's he got that I haven't got? You never said such sweet things when we were married. You don't sing me love songs...You don't bring me flowers...anymooore...

I....thought....cat....was..... nevermind :-~

Mavis! You never told me! *sniff* *sob* I thought you were mine...now that I know there was someone else... HAHAHAHAHAHHA!

i'm so confused.....................................................................

"it is wonderful on graham crackers, bread, and um friends" Mmm...I have to try that....mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

But watch not to get any graham cracker crumbs in your friends navels. Or have a vacuum cleaner on hand to tidy up. (I read that tip in Cosmo...or was it "The Aussie Mating Rituals Manual for Beginners"...never mind)

dearest cat a day without you would be like living a whole day thinking there is only one hemisphere and everyone has to wear the same exact shoes and then go home to eat stale croutons and sleep in a damp ditch without ever changing chonies. Plus also would be like winning forty million dollars but you can only use it to buy toothpaste.

Mavis...ahhhhhhh the magic is still there, my little pumpkin face. Even though thou now lusts after Nutella and not Vegemite, there is still a place in my swag for you. After all a day without you is like being able to taste only the cork of the wine, like never smelling the garlic in the bubbling pasta pot on your grandmother's stove and only being able to look at, not stroke, a perfectly purple gleaming piece of satin.

!!! cat! !!! vegemite is okay in small doses. like tiny specks maybe. sometimes i eat marmite but only when i'm being obnoxious and teasing my roommate....

I'm eating Nutella right now. I'm not telling what I put it on.

Some toast? Mavis---A day without you makes for a goshity-darned boring time Yeah. To elaborate, a day without you is like a lifetime without ever kissing someone, like a freezer full of frozen mice when you're looking for an ice cream sandwich (pilate, i must agree, ice cream sandwiches are quality stuff...I want one RIGHT NOW!), like a year of having stomach virus, like never being able to taste wonderful foods, et cetera! And cat, a day without you... is like Running the 2 mile in a track meet in a snow storm after a year of not running, like writing your will in your deathbed and your pen running out of ink, like having your pants invaded by rabid gerbils (shudder)....and so on. Sorabji is usually one of the high points of my day...I love all of you people, even the ones I disagree with (of course, I'm excluding satan and others like him) i gotta get some nutella. sounds yummy... what's vegemite?

yuck nutella is gross, but vegemite is yum! altho lots of americans dont like it. when i lived in aussie i always used to eat marmite, when i came back to New Zealand I got my taste back for vegemite. Trace send me a mailing address and I will send you some vegemite/marmite and maybe nutella. btw pen freaks - I promise they are coming, I have been a slacker - they're siting in my cupboard waiting for me to take them to the post office! Sorry.

pens!! yay!! i had forgotten......

Indeed. Pens.

Cat, A day without you is like... a conversation with myself, a word without vowels, a journey without epipahny, a song without a soul.

Antigone....A day without you is like all the books I have never read, with their pages of wisdoms still a secret, and their poetry never tripping from my lips. It is a blank page that I stare at, searching for words - finding them missing, and mourning their loss. You are the pen I grip as I write my story.

and you say, Cat, that you aren't going to share that poetry...

a day without Gee is a waste of a day.