From a Frozen Brain (reposted)

MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2010

From a Frozen Brain

I have forty-five minutes to write this blog by midnight, and I don't know what to write. Writer's block. Finally, I feel like a true writer, because I have come to the dreaded confusion, that blank state, that sterile tank of thoughts, when no matter how hard I try to think of something to write, all I can think about is my chipped nail polish, the marker mark on my finger, and the person IMing me on Gchat. We can add to that the phone conversation I just had, the phone conversations I will have tomorrow, and what time I am waking up in the morning--how many hours of sleep will I get if I actually wake up in time to exercise?

I now have thirty-six minutes to write this blog, and all I can think about is my brother tapping his finger across the table, and I am wondering what he is thinking about. And I am wondering what my other brother is so zealously typing on face-book. There are dead flowers hanging from above the middle of the table. I put them there because I wanted to dry them, but they look terrible because under them my mom has a bouquet of fresh flowers, and because they are upside-down from a ribbon. I wrote about what I have to become accustomed to in my new home, or rather my old home--meanwhile, my mom is probably writing in her journal about how ugly my dead upside-down flowers look above her fresh colorful flowers in a vase.

I have twenty-eight minutes to write this blog, and I will write how thankful I am for this blog, because now I feel guilty, honestly guilty because today I only wrote a scrappy, children's story while I baby-sat when I was supposed to be drawing a picture. I did not set aside any other time to write. This horrible feeling is wonderful, because now I am going to write tomorrow.

I have twenty-three minutes to write this blog, which is plenty of time to write about what my friend is trying to get me to include in this blog, that "he believes that if you can feel it in your heart that you should be doing it, you should be doing it," or to write about the crickets chirping outside and how incredible the air feels, or to tell you about the annoying noise my brother's chair is making. I could also describe to you the painted birdhouse (this same brother and I made) that is swaying diligently outside the window and how no birds ever come to it anymore, the orange candles living in orange fake flowers as the center piece of our kitchen table and how they remind me that Fall is near, or I could tell you that the dead flowers are almost dry and how then I can finally put the nice ones right side up in a vase to hang onto a memory forever, just like with the rest of my dried flowers, but those would all be incredibly boring things to bring into my blog, so I will leave them out.