After nearly two years of productivity—after writing over 500 poems, stories, and essays—I have come to a dead stop.
I don’t think it’s an accident that my Covid-forced isolation fueled my creativity. What else was there to do but write? What was I supposed to do with all my fear and doubt? And also with the joys of just being constantly and consistently present for my wife and sons? Covid was emotionally devastating at times but it was also invigorating.
I think the Covid bubble was good for my marriage and for my relationships with our sons. And my reservation-based siblings and I communicated by text and FaceTime far more than we’ve ever done previously. I feel a renewed sense of love and belonging with them.
But now, after 31 months of a slow and private pandemic life, I’m tentatively resuming a public life. In the last two weeks, I’ve attended a Jim Jeffries comedy show (wildly offensive and utterly entertaining) and two fundraising luncheons (both of which felt like Covid-debutante balls because everybody was nervous, well-dressed, and happy to be re-introduced to one another).
So, yes, I think my life is again fully of possibilities and all those possibilities are crowding into my headspace. Perhaps above all other considerations, our Seattle Mariners are on the verge of making the Major League Baseball playoffs for the first time in 20 years and that’s got me intensely distracted.
So, for the next few posts, I’m going to delve into the archives and post stuff from my previously-published books—stuff that I can record, revisit, and possibly rewrite.
In fact, I’m currently rewriting a story that I published in an anthology eight years ago. I think I can make it better. So I’ll post that sometime over the weekend.
So here we are. I’m going to give you a glimpse of what it means when a writer goes silent. And how that same writer can kickstart his brain and soul again.
In the meantime, here’s the first stanza of a new poem. It’s all I have right now. Where am I going to go with it? I don’t know. It was inspired by a text from a friend. He sent me a cryptic note with a photograph but I couldn’t see in the photo what he wanted me to see.
Pine is desire. Pine is tree. I climb and climb but you're not there. I can't see what I'm meant to see
Sherman, for this note on the blank page & COVID I am thankful ... I started a weekly "Pandemic Journal" in early January 2020 ... I think I should quit it now, but I can't, partly because every Tuesday, now, I "reminisce" about the pandemic, your note hit that nerve. --CX
I can not move after being destroyed by THE BUSINESS OF FANCY DANCING...Your FIRST book. Comes to my mind, that had you never written another dream after that book, it would have been ok.
Pandemic or no, a dry spell in your creative output at this point (A or B or politics) in time, seems almost like a good thing, ‘while waiting for something to happen’.