Sea Changes

My few friends who care wonder what I’ve been writing recently. I’ve told them I’m in a fallow state, not writing much and with no plans.

“Oh, writer’s block,” they say.

“No, not really writer’s block. Waiting. It’s a matter of waiting.”

Which is to say that this state doesn’t really bother me. It’s part of my relation to writing and reading and life, and always has been.

What bothers me is something different. I’m again undergoing a slow sea change of sorts. My sense of what is actually happening in the world and how one might respond is shifting. Things I’ve written in recent years, some posted here, now seem skewed and irrelevant.

Anyone passionately digging will end up tunneling out in a place he didn’t expect, and his view will shift. It’s little surprise I’m again in a different place.

This would be the second sea change I’ve faced since my twenties. With the first I felt slightly that I was betraying my previous self. Now I’ll probably feel some of that, but betrayal is not really the point when one suddenly sees something new. When one is forced to by one’s honesty. The thing is to admit the change and begin walking from where one now stands.

I won’t explain further here. Perhaps in the writing to come.