The past three days there has been an essay trying to form itself in my mind. I don’t know what it’s about. I’m not sure what order the words go in. I don’t even have the words yet. But it’s in there. I feel it.
Where is it? Is there a certain part of the brain where it lives? One part, or several? Is it split apart into shards in there? Do the fragments know (feel?) their kinship? Are they aware they’re a part of something larger? Are they, of their own accord, agitating toward (re)union? I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. Or if they’re good questions at all. I just feel a piece of writing trying to form itself. This is a good feeling. A climate of possibility.
The rest of my life feels somewhat fragmentary now too. Are those fragments aware of each other? Do they know they are a part of something larger? I’m not sure. Maybe we’re never sure about such things. I find myself needing to give Grace a lot these days, mostly to myself. The past few months haven’t always felt good, though they’ve been far from all bad. A mix, a climate of possibilities in its own right. I’ve often felt challenged: a little too much work, not enough time to do it in, a few ill-timed illnesses, and…just the general ups, downs, and other vagaries of being a human being on planet Earth in the year of Our Lord 2026. So it goes, as the Ecclesiast wrote.
It feels like all of those particular shards — this vague mix of difficulties and possibilities — difficult possibilities? possible difficulties? — are — so to speak — connected. The writing ones, the real-life ones. They may or may not know the ways in which they are connected. But they are connected.
They are connected to this essay which doesn’t yet know what it’s about (and yet somehow of course it does).
They are connected to my brain and now your brain, dear reader, in mysterious but likely very real ways.
I am, perhaps, allowing myself the indulgence of some vagary myself. Maybe I’m being cryptic. Difficult. On purpose. Writing an essay that is not an essay. Who does that? Why?
Or maybe (probably) I just don’t know what I’m talking about, what I want (need?) to say.
This is the problem of writing anything , especially anything that arrives unformed, swirling around your consciousness for three days, resisting arrest, so to speak. An “essay” that wants to be free of the shackles language wants to place upon it: i.e., that there are supposed to be words, that the words are supposed to go in a particular order. That they are supposed to mean something. These words do not really do any of that. Not very well. They form, at best, a placeholder “essay” (attempt), a shadowy approximation of the real essay visiting me in spirit form, saying “catch me if you can.”
Do I keep trying to put it down in words? Is that what I am doing, what I have done here? Are you the person to ask? Am I? It’s the Bible isn’t it (or is it Shakespeare; probably both?), the line about sound and fury signifying nothing. There’s also an idiot somewhere in there. Those things are in me too: sound, fury, idiocy. Sometimes they make themselves into words. Very occasionally (but not now) they make themselves into Grace, or some vague approximation of it. So, yes, I keep trying.
[Micro = short. / Meta = writing about writing. / Micro-Meta Monday = musings appearihere on the last Monday of each month.]