Writers Block or Something Like It

This is the thing about writers block: it sucks! Although I’m not even sure if I necessary have writers block but perhaps its tortured cousin to it. Perhaps one would call it writers-back up.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas to write about, cause I do. I have several ideas for novels and just as many seeds of short stories tumbling inside my head. What happens is I will write about 200 some words of it and then… poop. Nothing. I’ve lost the spark. I can’t make plot point A connect to plot point B. It’s sad really cause I would love to see this stories and narratives complete themselves. 

I’ve gone back in my hard-drive to a folder entitled STORIES, which is where many a story goes rest for a while. I call it the cryogenic portion of its life. They are there, exactly how I left them. Here is a girl walks to the edge of a forest in search of a pumpkin. A man gives shelter to a sea-faring traveler and is attempting to dock the boat named Selkie. His arms have been pulling on that rope for over a year now. In another, a whale has invited a man to touch her slick skin under the light of a full moon. In another story a woman has been attempting to change her villages’ bigoted attitudes towards the family of satyrs who are her neighbors for quite some time now. 

And these are just the stories I started last year. Never mind the tales I’ve spun over this summer. The crow people and the woman with her cherries may never have the rest of their stories told. The boy who began to study under the wise-woman might never become a fully actualized individual. Who is the Queen of Crustaceans and will she ever reconcile with her sister the Duchess of Cephalopods? Two churches stand in the middle of an post-apocalyptic town and the people are learning to live in harmony with nature again. This is a solute to the Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.

How many other pages will be born and laid to rest in this corner of my hard-drive till I liberate them from their slumber? When will I release them from the task I’ve left them with and find resolution? 

Perhaps, I just need an inspiration and a muse.

Red Cherries and Mottled Beans

Her skin was the color of sand after a rain storm and as smooth as a shell. On that morning her finger tips were as if they had been dipped in red wine. It was the season for cherries and how she loved cherries. She popped them in her tiny mouth and spit the pits out into her hands all afternoon. And now the bread would be kneed with her juice stained hands, lending a new and subtle sweetness to the dough. Her children wouldn’t notice and either would The Tempest.

                The Tempest, or as he as more commonly known, her husband, would be home from the sea this afternoon and she wanted to make something special. So that morning she went down to the wharf to pick up the usual amounts of lemons and flour and yeast. But she also bought a pound of almonds and several handfuls of dark cherries. It took all her will power to not eat the while of them on her way back up the dusty streets and spit the pits into ditches and side streets alike. She would pray to the ruby red god who looked after all fruits with a pitted center that they would grow and she could have cherries rain on her every time she made her way to the early simmer market.

                She allowed herself only three of the nearly black spheres on her way home. The first one she ate right away. Its tight skin split so easy with the closing of her jaws. The savored the release of sweet and mildly tart juice. With her tongue she muscled the flesh away from the stone, the seed. Once cleared of every fiber she-- with as much femininity as she could muster--- spit the pit into her palm and tucked it into a fold in her sari.

                This fold she created specifically for seeds and pit of fruits she loved. Countless cherry pits found their way into the pocket. Beans that were mottled with purples, blues and grays once filled the secret space. She found them at a market as she traveled west, the basket was spilling over with these beauties and she vowed to plant them in whatever garden she would call home. When she reached the sea side village on the Mediterranean and married the tempest, she buried the seeds and tended them with as much care as she could.

The spade shaped leaved climbed all the way up a ladder leaning against the house and bunched like a great crown on the eves. She was still learning the language of these people and there for named them in her native Sanskrit: sahasrara, one thousand one thousand. The vines gave off hundreds of beautiful purple and white flowers in the early heat of summer and the pods the extended form them were long and slender. They were plan green and were deceiving. Who would have thought that such a common and simple looking plant would yield thousands of pearl like beans with such colors?  When the rains subside and the dry season is upon them, the green selves shrink back and cling to the seeds within, like a string of beads that lives. Finally when the time is right, the seams open up and one thousand beans tumble to the ground below. They were prefect in their dented ovular shape, swirled and splotched with purples and navies, and whites.

In time, the children would help her collect them into clay vessels. In the coarse of things, they would get board to collecting them into bowls and find them perfect for throwing at one another. Intercepting a flying troop of mottled projectiles, she scolds them gently and reminds them that this is their dinner and is not meant to be thrown around. They would cease for the day but come the next and the day after that, they would see them fit for pelting each other again. But she knows this and will, in her best attempts, make their lives happy and nondestructive, especially when it comes to the garden and their meals.

But when the cherries fall from they’re boughs daily, the beans are just several leaves and two tendrils wrapped around the legs of the ladder.