You feel depressed, so you don’t write. As though everything you write will be something you want to share. As though whatever you want to share must be Great Literature. Well, a lot of us are like John Berryman’s Henry, right now:
. . . I am heavily bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature . . . I got no inner resources. But I do know that actions — even small and meaningless — are the only remedy for boredom I’ve ever come across. Also for depression. As with every crisis, we stay afloat using what we have from the past, which may not equip us with what we need in the present. What served us well as a cooler now perhaps has relevance only as a life-preserver: it’s insulation is insignificant, even as its ability to float, which didn’t keep our beer cold, maybe now is keeping us from drowning. So, maybe now, when we can’t do things the way we were doing them, is a good time to figure out new ways of doing. (A bad analogy, but serviceable, as a boogie board.) I’ve been putting off posting (and everything else) — this morning. All the lovely prematurely-blooming sprung flowers are blasted by an icy, sleety cold front, the unnatural warmth nipped in the bud. The sky is gray and the air is cold. The world is ugly, and all the people are sad. Ten million+ of my co-countrypersons are out of work. We’re in a deadly epidemic that shows no sign of abating. And I haven’t even mentioned the far more devastating and long-lasting effects of a global atmosphere going haywire. So, instead of writing on a post, I just start writing on a pad (lying down, at that). Student: “I’m finding it hard to concentrate enough to write. Anybody have advice?” The bored leading the bored. Well, all I can say is that writing is a great way of focusing your mind enough to write. And a situation like this — not to mention what things will be like 2 or 20 years from now — takes some of the pressure off. I mean, who really gives a fuck? Write what you want to, as much as you want or can, when you can. If the virus don’t get you, the flood, fire, famine, or any number of other things will. In the meantime, do the dishes, grade a quiz or grate some cheese, write some lines, then do whatever comes after that.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |