A descent into madness

Write anything until you write something, I have said. Some days I sit down to manipulate words and write gibberish, the words barely making sense in the combinations I’m forming. I suppose “stream of consciousness” is one phrase for it. But I soldier on, and more often than not, at some point the ducks line up and start quacking.

This particular day I was sidelined and distracted by a mysterious pain in my knee and hip and found myself unable to concentrate on anything else except trying to maneuver my body into a position that didn’t hurt.

So, I wrote about that. What else could I do?

“Bah! Humbug! Am I to be defined and debilitated by my aches and pains?” I wrote. “Fie! A pox on aches and pains. Reach inside and pull lush and lustrous words and assembly them like magic singing.

“Pain has a way of diffusing focus, or rather of focusing on itself rather than the task at hand — the task of making magic, conjuring beauty from the air and grace from the sky,” I continued. “Am I even making sense, or am I hurling words against the wall to see what sticks? Sharp pain is a descent into madness.”

Wait, was that it? “Sharp pain is a descent into madness.” Had I written anything until I wrote that sentence, which was something?

“Oh just stop, you’re being just foolish now,” I wrote. “He doesn’t mean it, posterity, he’s just writing words to move the pen across the page until coherence arrives.”

And then I stopped writing and picked up the laptop to finish the thought. Where was I going with this? I’m not sure, but while I was scrawling and typing I didn’t notice the pain anymore.

Published by WarrenBluhm

Wordsmith and podcaster, Warren is a reporter, editor and storyteller who lives near the shores of Green Bay with his wife, two golden retrievers, Dejah and Summer, and Blackberry, an insistent cat. Author of It's Going to Be All Right, Echoes of Freedom Past, Full, Refuse to be Afraid, Gladness is Infectious, 24 flashes, How to Play a Blue Guitar, Myke Phoenix: The Complete Novelettes, A Bridge at Crossroads, The Imaginary Bomb, A Scream of Consciousness, and The Imaginary Revolution.

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