Like everyone else, I guess I have hit a wall, or better, I have reached a cul-de-sac. I could not move forward for the wall looming before me is wide and strong. It feels that the only thing I could do is back out and retrace my steps.
I had been feeling this wall for quite a long while now and I thought that time and a change of place could help me wreck the wall. Well, I guess I am mistaken. Right now, I am sitting alone on a bench near a Japanese gate (called torii) here in the University of the Philippines – Los Baños. For more than an hour, I have been observing and watching things around me, hoping I can find the inspirations to write again. The fallen papaya tree, battered by the recent super typhoon Haiyan. The drifting cirrus clouds in the soft blue sky. The college boys playing Frisbee with a pet dog. The young couple kissing on the concrete steps. Even the different hues of the greens surrounding me. I have been watching them all afternoon, but the wall inside me is still standing grand and mighty. The writer’s block is still in me.
But why such a wall existed when I could have easily drawn inspirations from all the beauty that surrounds me. Even the “not so beautiful” can be a source of inspiration. There’s too much to write about, but I find that there’s too little to write. Why is there a wall?
I think in the final analysis, it is me who created the wall. I may have unintentionally put up the wall, building it huge and strong with all the loneliness, stress and worries in me. I see inspirations around me, but none in me. For the ability to write does not come from the elements outside of one’s self. It comes from within him, from his very mind, heart and soul.
Maybe, from the number of things and changes happening to me and around me lately, I guess I am in the stage of balancing my life, juggling priorities and rearranging the essentials. I could only hope that when things settle into equilibrium, the wall will collapse and the writer’s block evaporates. Until then, I just have to conquer this block little by little. Like what I am doing now. When I thought I am exhausted and cannot write a thing, I come up with this piece.
November 9, 2013
