At times there seemed to be so much beauty I couldn’t convey it, and at other times it evaded me for weeks or for months, for what seemed like forever. I sensed a link between my seeing the beauty and feeling inspired to write, and a form of depression that either prevented me from seeing it or became the only output when I could not.

There was the pattern of wrinkles on my skin that had changed where my thumbs bent. The sound of birds singing mixed with a jazz trumpet near dusk, and the calm of knowing I didn’t need to be anywhere. The ticking of an old clock, or the taste of grilled chicken. The smell of charcoals when they catch and the sense the grass would stay green for weeks, then the knowledge that even after it goes brown, it would green up again when the rains return come fall.

That all this around us will continue well beyond us, and maybe we will, too. That we might be relieved of this round of living with another go. That most things you can just burn and return to the ground, and in most cases it’s good for the soil. That one night out of the month the sky is devoid of any moon, but only 30 days later it’s full again. That kids leave the house one day (in theory) and return, if only to do the laundry or for holidays or to impress their friends. That no matter how bad we fuck over nature it seems to come back again if only we get out of the way and let it be.

I had the sense that something was wrong with me, and had been for a long time, but when I wrote and relaxed into the world the world relaxed into me and I was spared of myself, had even elevated to more of myself, to something more than what I could have imagined, as more a rendering than a physical form. An abstraction, that’s often more appealing than the actual account. The hope and belief in a soul that endures us well beyond us, that you could call self, that requires some paying attention to notice, and perhaps the occasional toll.

Categories: identity, prose, writing

Tags: mid-life crisis, prose, self-actualization, self-awareness, self-consciousness, short form, spirituality, William Pearse writer, writers block, writing