The Shallows
I’ve been thinking the last couple of days about deep-diving into material and skirting on the surface of it. I’ve read a lot of philosophy in the last year-and have had a lot of catching up to do-and I’ll be the first to admit that there is a lot I don’t understand in the bones and sinew of Western thought. But I find myself, at times, sifting through philosophical essays that I read to glean aphorisms or distillations. Amusingly, this has come about a lot more since I’ve started blogging (amusing, because my blogging has been scarce of late. But I think about it, mull over 3 paragraph posts even when they don’t crystallize into sitting down in front of the computer and writing it out-sure, it’s kind of like the notion of “I really have a novel inside of me, I just haven’t written it yet.” But, I would argue, the stakes are much lower!) And sometimes, I wonder what the hell I’m doing, skipping like a stone on the oceans of ideas, all horizons and no plumbing (both as a verb and a noun, i.e., the guts).
A lot of this is being hard on myself, sure; a lot of this is a function of my oft-times frantic work schedule, the 45 minute commute each way. So I know a lot of this is a consolidatory effort to focus on the fiction and poetry in the midst of this. In the middle of writing a new novel that, for 2 years, has been an absolute bear — whose final shape in some ways feels more apparitional now than it’s ever been — there haven’t been a lot of spare mental parts.
(Still, able to procrastinate with the best of them!)
It’s an omnivorous creature, this novel. And yet as difficult as its been, I’m still finding the struggle worthwhile.
I think I know how you feel. It’s what I’ve been feeling lately about the book I’m working on. Or the book I’m working on not working on lately, it seems.