Writing

I can't write. You may think this is what I'm doing now, but you're wrong. There are words, and then there are words. There are no words for what I want to write about. I have started this post four times already. There are hidden words that no one will ever see.

No, I am not writing now. There are words here that are signifiers for something, but this is not writing. It can't be. I am unable to write.


I have been unable to write for some time now.

I am wondering if/when it will feel alright to write again. If/when the words will being to flow again from the writer/soul. If/when the words will mean/reveal what I/the writer want them to. It is strange to think that I am typing, but not writing. The keys rise and fall and letters/codes appear/burn but there is nothing/everything to be made from this.

I don't want to write. That is why I am not writing now.

***

For those of you/whoever you are/whatever you are for whom my posts have been a little obscure lately, I lost a very dear friend/colleague of mine in a tragic/terrible/unnecessary/hateful accident 5 1/2 weeks ago. It feels like so much longer than that. My fellow 'inquiring mind' is gone and there is so much that I want to talk to him about.

Now that I have started to type about it there isn't really anything else that I want to say.

***

Now, you will see that I may start to type again, occasionally, about other things. But don't misunderstand me. I am not writing. Not yet.

A Nice Moment

On Friday one of my year 10 boys, 'Metallica', knocked on my staffroom door and said,
"Miss nb, I want to take you to lunch."
"Oh really, Metallica? What did you have in mind?"
"I'm making a three course meal for catering and I need someone to eat it."
"Can you cook?"
"Yeah"
"Metallica, that sounds like just what I need. Thank you for asking me."
"Okay, cool, I'll come and collect you in about an hour or so."
"I'll be here."

An hour or so later, I sat down at a beautifully presented table and dined my way through a warm and spicy lentil soup (so good- Metallica has promised me the recipe), fettucine carbonara and pancakes topped with strawberries, kiwi fruit and homemade chocolate sauce. Yum.

A colleague of mine was saying the other day that at times like this, the fact that 'life goes on' is both a blessing and a curse. That certainly feels true at the moment.

This dead flatness

It's not true that I'm always thinking of H. Work and conversation make that impossible. But the times when I'm not are perhaps my worst. For then, although I have forgotten the reason, there is spread over everything a vague sense of wrongness, of something amiss. Like in those dreams where nothing terrible occurs- nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast time- but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly. So with this. I see the rowan berries reddening and don't know for a moment why they, of all things, should be depressing. I hear a clock strike and some quality it always had before has gone out of sound. What's wrong with the world to make it so flat, shabby, worn-out looking? Then I remember...
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead... I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned- I had warned myself- not to reckon on wordly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accepted it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination...

-C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

***

I am finding that I can walk into class and laugh when a year 12 kid leaps up from behind his desk, snaps a photo of me mid-teaching, then return to his seat and says, "Sorry- photo for the Valedictory dinner. Carry on, miss".
Then, I wander back into a silent staffroom, and wonder why.