the attic is empty

a grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief.

- coleridge. consider that won’t you?
as i flail about attempting to cobble together
a post without a link, without a spark, without an idea,
a stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned post,
which finds no sufficient cause, no point.

hopefully you have not noticed that for the last month or so i have been brain-dead, seeped and sapped, the melon has long been balled as it were. perhaps you have? well i suppose an explanation is in order if so. at some point, mid-sentence no doubt, it dawned on me that i had nothing rattling around in ol’ noggin to write about. quite a surprise let me tell you. it was as if i’d been having a garage sale of gently worn ideas for two years (everything must go!) and then one day the inventory finally ran out (where’d everything go?) i’ve tried to conceal that fact from you, the wonderful folks rummaging through the piles in my digital driveway, but, well, there it is. i seem to be out of stock. the attic is empty.

how do they “harrumph” in foreign lands i wonder? 

sure, sure, i’ve been posting links, noodling about on ye olde photoshoppe, which is all well and good, but damn it bugs me to not be able to write any proper posts! i’d sure like to. i’d like to write any damned thing; to be at play in the keys of the board! and yet, for all the want- nothing. odd the way this happens to the mind. for me personally it is cyclical. always has been no matter what the medium. i take the sponge view. (wait one darned minute! i believe this post may have just earned its keep with that bizarre sentence. “i take the sponge view.” i like it.) a sponge is a temporary vessel, the midpoint between spilled milk and the drain, or spilled whisky and the throat. it must be squeezed empty before it can be filled again. so creatively there are times when i gush forth and times when i must soak up.

to misquote and flagrantly offer no credit where due:
the spirit is willing, but the brain is spongy, and bruised.

you know, there is the possibility that my diagnosis is wrong, and that i am not entering into a soaking up phase at all. what if it’s something more awful and permanent than that? it’s possible my brain has simply stopped functioning. it’s possible i have in fact forgotten how to think. it is possible a small sexily clad succubus entered my bed chamber one evening and heartlessly removed the “clever” center of my brain and traipsed off into the night to use it for her own fiendish purposes. it is possible my brain is then a “phantom limb.” it is possible that one yankee game i watched last week was in fact a porthole in time, constructed by my enemies, the viewing of which sent my mind back to the age of 15 when i actually followed baseball, and alloted mental cpu cycles and storage to its myriad statistics! unlikely sure, but possible. then again perhaps it’s not my spongy brain’s fault? perhaps it is rather a failing on the worlds part. perhaps the world is just perceptively less interesting than it was two months ago? perhaps the world has gotten dumberer? or perhaps the world is just being lazy! “you damn lazy uninspiring world, get your shit together!” (angry fist shaking here.)

in any case before the cruel hateful “ha ha your brain doesn’t work! you can’t write” and the “hey i want my 25 cents back for this crumby lava lamp” letters start pouring in i just want to say the following-

1) why it gotta be like dat?

2) in the near future you can expect the meta-blogging, news story forwarding, book scanning, and photoshopery to continue unabated, but don’t expect much else. not from me at least. there is always the chance one of our non-brain-dead members will contribute some letters organized into brilliant, funny, interesting sentences and paragraphs, but don’t hold your breath. “you damn lazy nonists, get your shit together!” (mock-angry fist shaking here.)

all the best from your spongy friend-
j

posted by jmorrison on 08/13 | announcements | | send entry