writer’s block in the season of the witch
By: Juliana S
Tags: Blogging, Writers Block, Creative Non Fiction, Creative Writing, Writers Life

Before they butchered the trees to make way for power lines, before the maimed trees began to sicken and die, when shade was spread over this place and protected us from sun, my twin and I wrote stories. I imagined my adult self writing at a desk, shifting important papers around, because that was a shiny new word. “She shifted a stack of papers to the other side of her desk and continued writing.” I rarely finished them, the stories, but a beginning is easy. It can be anything.

Which is good, because what a jumble my dead brain is. Filing. Documenting. Ticking boxes. Sucked into screens. Hopes and dreams and other forgotten things spinning idly, quietly, down the drain.

Another Christmas season, another unread book beside my bed, the usual clutter collecting dust. I can’t I can’t I can’t. Like that little engine that couldn’t make it up the mountain.

My dead brain exchanged a few words with my mom. A dead friend had sent her a friend request on Facebook.

“I think he died several years ago.”

“Maybe he’s back from the grave,” I say, being unacquainted with the corpse in question and not one to judge, us being two zombies on social media simply discussing a third. You have to hand it to Facebook: not only are they probably capable of swaying elections, but now they can resurrect the dead. We should buy stock. Sadly, it was brought to my attention at the beginning of this pandemic, when it would’ve been wise to buy Amazon stock, that one cannot buy a fraction of a share. If you cannot afford a whole share, you’re plumb outa luck. Them’s the rules. Also, our corporate overlords, while providing efficient and addictive products and services, aren’t exactly scrupulous. Bygones.

I don’t know what happens to whatever I earn from the screens anyway, the documenting, the filing, the things, all the things. Maybe I throw it back into the screens to buy things, because who doesn’t want things? Products to make your skin soft and lovely, your lips kissable? What woman doesn’t want to be beautiful? And isn’t beauty the best sort of armor? “Until it isn’t,” chimes in rape culture. And let it be noted: pandemic days are not optimal for kissing.

You might look up one day and consider that the only Revolution around here requires a prescription from the vet. And it’s dinnertime, the cat insists. It’s usually dinnertime, actually. You might wonder if we could all use a prescription to shield us from bloodsuckers and parasites, to stop our resources from being drained.

If I tried to write about how scary this year’s been, how unsteady those days before election and now inauguration, my sentence might trail off into a stuttering heap, might stumble back into that silent abyss. I could prattle on about the curried pumpkin soup I concocted from a pert little pumpkin fresh from my friend’s garden. This could be a recipe blog. Or an ode to my cat. The internet will never NOT need more adorable cat pics. Or I could creep up behind you and whisper in your ear of witches or whatever side-eye creatures slink about at night, and why not heed those ghosts who walk among us? Why not summon any specter other than those of climate crisis and pandemic, of fascism and brutality — any others, anything else. We could peel back the onion and ponder root causes, class structures and lurking underbellies, repressed pain and rage hidden just below the surface, sublimated into hate, a tinderbox ready for the match. We could fancy ourselves wise enough to analyze and diagnose, to make sense of the senseless.

Instead, I wander after work in a daze. Legs carry body around block and another block and eyes try not to see the tree-cutting group, the machine that incinerates the tree right there in the street, right out in the open, only a few paces from the grass where it once stood. I plug my earbuds in and tell myself: don’t worry. You’re going to get out of here.