the cognitive process of acquiring skill or knowledge
When I let go of the rail, something happens.
Category: fear
a figure of speech in which an expression is used to refer to something that it does not literally denote in order to suggest a similarity
I’m 5 years old, maybe younger, definitely preschool. I’m wearing my hooded blue cordoroy coat, zipped in snug, wearing ice skates and standing on the edge of the rink.
Near the railing.
In fact, I’m hanging on to the railing for dear life, watching the other kids skate and laugh and fall down and get back up again.
I look at my hands, knuckles white, death grip on the rail.
Every time I move my feet, I feel the blade cutting into the ice and slip. Each foot seems to want to go in different directions. But if I hang on to the rail, hard, as hard as I’ve ever gripped anything in my entire life… my feet can’t go far.
One finger starts to loosen… knuckles slowly turn flesh-colored again… One finger slowly moves itself away from the others, twitching from the release of tension, but ready in an instant to resume clutching the rail.
I slip. I grip harder.
The sounds of yelling and happy voices are muffled by the thick warm material of the coat, somewhere behind me. Out on the rink. The volume of their joyful noise rises and falls as they circle the rink.
The cold slowly penetrates my protective coat.
I manage to let go, briefly, nanoseconds’ worth, my palm separated by bare milimeters of air.
True story. For several certain values of True.
Why I write (or not)
I should be writing.
OK, I am writing, I’m writing in my blog, but what I mean is that I should be writing, working on the two or three or whatever novels that are sitting, fallow in my brain. I can picture them in there, hard-bound books with no dust jacket, the words existing in some kind of indeterminate state, waiting to become actual. They’re laying in plain sight, on a shelf right where my mental homunculus paces back and forth in the mental library where he spends most of his time.
No pressure, they seem to say (since, even though they’re mental images of future goals, they aren’t bound to the same rules as actual books), no hurry, just write us when you’ve got the energy and time… say, you’re aren’t doing anything right now, are you? Maybe you could just spin out a chapter or two…? No? Maybe work on the outline a bit, flesh us out? No? Well, we’ll just wait here, then while you finish whatever it is you are working on. Yes, it’s certainly been a long day, hasn’t it? Long year, more like. We can see that you’re tired. Just go rest a bit, and we’ll wait here… still waiting…
Yeah, my mental images of my goals are really good with the guilt. They probably learned that from my mother. Heh.