The real thing I need is to do something. When I first started out with the 100 days of writing it was because my mind was full of ideas. Now I have emptied out those ideas, refilled it, and emptied it again. I also did a good amount of hiking and other activities early on, but after 50 days I've allowed myself to fall back into the routine of daily life. I get up, eat my Coco Puffs, go to work, eat lunch, sit around wasting time, eat dinner, and go to sleep. There is plenty to do around here and the main inspiration for this project was discontent at how this area rejects history and nature. How Norther Virginia is nothing but a bedroom community. That there is no here here.
That was the impetuous of this project but as it went on that changed and it became a focus on memories and time. I am fascinated by the idea of time, and how we think of it, and how it might really be, and how all these things are at odds. Time is like a half formed river that we are floating down as it is formed for the first time, and through our memories we can go back and visit any moment along the river. It isn't as good or bad as the first time and because this is happening in our minds we can reshape the past, make it how we wished it would have happened. It will never feel real because it isn't real, but most of us have had lucid dreams that are very close to feeling real. Part of me believes that if we could concentrate hard enough we could achieve something close to time travel even though it would only be internal.
This is the theme I've been stuck on. I can't get away from it and find something new to move onto, but I've also noticed that the 100 days of writing has become something like a journal. Each day it is a new thought, a new idea, and often times it is about what I did the previous day or something that happened to me that day. It is a collection of individual poems, but they are connected and meant to be read together and in order. That is how this is coming together, but it isn't what I intended. I've always felt that what the author intends doesn't matter one damn bit. Society and the world around a writer will have influence on their writing whether they want it to or not and what writing says about the world is more important than what it says about the individual. Even thinking this I believe this can only truly be achieved accidental. Purposeful statements about the world end up sounding preachy.
This is where I am. More than half way to the finish line and I feel like there is nothing left to give. In exercise it is called a wall, and once broken through a second wind is achieved. My goal now is to break through the wall, crash my way onto the other side, and get up in full sprint. I don't know if I will be successful, but I've come too far to fail. This project is 100 days of writing, not 54, and I can't stop now and consider it a success even if what I have so far is the best I can produce. I have to see this through to the end. Finishing is the only option, and I have to find someway to find the inspiration to do so. And as I write this sentence I think it has hit me.
Skipping Record
Stuck in my way with
non-variations on a theme.
Trapped with thoughts on memory and time,
and I wrote about that yesterday.
Life is too much routine.
The same repeating rhythm like
a drummer waiting on his band.
Contentment forms few artistic thoughts
and nothing interesting seeks me out.
The mundane has become too mundane.
No more howling banshee cats or
overly angered motorists.
Perhaps our old friend rum
can take me to a different state of being,
and I can discover where the clowns went.
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