Why it's been hard to write

The one whom I loved has turned to clay.-- Epic of Gilgamesh, translation by Kent Dixon

There are days . . . months, a year . . . or two where we are challenged. The solidness of this world turns flimsy. Where what is up is suddenly down and down is up. We can no longer trust our senses or past experience. I remember as a teen at church singing a song about sinking sand. I am drowning in quick sand.

That house set on a firm foundation, sucked under, the timbers cracking and splintering. I can smell the wood pulp in the air.

And, I ask myself, is this how it has always been? We blame smart phones, social media, big government, the deep state, the media, Democrats, Republicans, our parents, our kids—but none of these seem to resolve the feeling, the reeling. The transience around me.

It’s not just the boy scouts going bankrupt, the church going down the toilet, pastors and priests—it’s all of us and everything that comes under question. Is this the existential period of life I skipped over in my 20s?

Actually I experienced the same thing at age 20, and I tried to walk away, but couldn’t. When faced with nothingness, I threw up my hands. It is better to believe in nonsense, is what I thought. I’ve continued with that pattern. The paradox. My gut tells me to try the thing that seems certain to fail, the awkward, the weird.

In retrospect all the crazy stuff that has forever been ingrained in my memory. The middle of the night phone calls, the driving somewhere to pick up a friend, giving away money with no chance it will be repaid, all the time spent writing novel manuscripts, poems, blog posts, flash. All the chirpy, far-flung hope.

I am the personification of that poster, the one with the cat hanging in there.

So, yeah, it’s been a challenging time.

Yet can we still be open to the sublime . . .