Hiatus

I feel it coming, like a dull blade reaching to the bones, slow and painful. I will probably start seeking out certain books by certain men and read certain passages in them before finding a corner in which to mope about it all. Certain books by certain men never fail to touch the right spots in the mind. The heart, after all, is just a bleeding organ, and shouldn't be encouraged too much to go its own way. 

I am behind on my deadline for coming Sunday's article, which I intend to write on Jawang ka Jindagiharu, the documentary about which I said in an earlier port that it is worthy of an entire essay of its own. I sat down to write it, but found it more fun to chat with Diwas and Tuan instead. I am feeling very sapped of any creativity at all, which seems like a corny thing to say, except it isn't. It is like a person, who finds he can't write at all anymore, trying to explain to another person what a block is. Such explanations always come off as excuses, lame attempts at hiding the real defects in ability and character. 

When you aren't feeling creative, you are feeling the burden of the mediocre. If you have seen good work done by others and want to do even better, but in your plate or your page you see sub-standard fare, you know the oppressive mass of mediocrity. It isn't borne of jealousy--it is an acuity of knowledge of what exists as the capacity and creations of your peers, and what exists as limits to your own abilities. 

And I have been feeling mediocre, a feeling that is made worse by the incapacity to imagine the alternative. As a writer, I should be able to imagine a better sentence or turn of phrase, at the most basic level, like choosing a brick that'll fit better into the masonry. I haven't been able to see anything. It could just be December, that damned beast, ramming its way into cranial folds and making me blue. Or, it is possible, I am just plain dumb in the choices I make.