writer's block

Hearing the drum roll as Brubek's "Take Five" album begins, I feel stumped again. Not sure what I want to write about. Having posted Hughes' "Theme for English B" earlier; I am reminded there's a bit of me in what I write, and - some times - a piece of you that I'm trying to appeal to...

just like fumbled, mumbled conversations, without a focus or topic. Ah! Small Talk! "How much of our lives is just idle conversation?" If there's to be no rules, need I try to impose rules to guide my brain, to put up some walls in my not-so-little fort...

Will I let myself be naked? ..vulnerable?

Or do I avoid topics, to prevent getting hurt?

...and what happens when a braver soul than I chooses to go there? Do I take the bait, or offer, instead, awkward silence?

Small talk can be neutral. Or it can swing it's barbed whips at a third party not present. Perhaps this is why celebrity gossip is so prevalent, as it could allow us to talk about our own struggles, through the lens of the public eye.

If I have NO interest or experience, I might give you a blank stare. Then again, if your enthusiasm, disgust, or other emotions are laced through your talk, I might emathize, and embrace your emotions as my own, and - tutor hat comes on - I might milk you for all I can about the topic, as the first steps towards building common knowledge and experience.

Examples?

Sex seems touchy... excuse te pun... Really, if it's even slightly deviant from some mythical gold standard of normal sex, my mind wants to steer away from the topic (especially if I have experience in those deviations) ...there needs to be a level of trust, that I won't be mocked; and, yet, triggers be damned! I might well need to be knocked or admonished, if some harm is part of those twists and turns. Of course, I don't want to get into specifics and details, because I do not trust the Facebook audience yet...

Feeling woefully ignorant abot politics and national news items. Feeling afraid to debate them online, or even in person; because I might show myself to be uninformed. Or, maybe I don't want to invest energy in informing others, in stemming perceived ignorance - because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings.

Gods be damned, though! We may be digging our own graves by passively allowing injustice to propogate, by turning a blind eye because we don't want to face the savagery of our fellows, or ourselves!

Like, letting business have lax regulation, leading to poisoned water supplies and earthquakes in new places and global warming cooking us in our filth....

My laundry alarm has gone off. I must away to get it put away.

(Perhaps more soon...)