Coping

It occurs to me that I have to draw on the power of the mind and not so heavily the power of the body and sense of place for my inspiration. Normally, if my body is stagnant, my mind is stagnant. No physical movement means no metaphysical movement, so to speak. Now that I have no choice, I’ve got to find another way of being for the next few weeks that works.

For the past three days I’ve been using coffee. This gives my body the temporary feeling of alertness and tricks my mind into leaps and bounds on the page. But it’s a quick fix and not the best thing for my digestive system and, well, it won’t work for a long period of time like I need it to.

Mind tricks. I’ve discovered that plugging headphones into the laptop works really well, even when I don’t have music playing. It gives other people the impression that I am unavailable because they think I can’t hear them and it gives me the physical feeling of being isolated from anything other than the computer, since the headphones physically attach me to it. When I do need music, it has to be classical or in another language. My current preference? Juana Molina’s album, Son (she is Argentinian).

I also use the façade of pressure to get my juices flowing again. If, for some reason, I have some moments of quiet at my parent’s house where people aren’t talking or calling or no one is watching a movie late at night, I tell myself that I have to use every second I have because I don’t know how long the quiet will last. It’s a kind of like a binge/purge relationship with writing and reading, so to speak.

But when I really feel myself losing it, I just sort of lie around on the floor and writhe in a miniature seizure. My parents find this amusing, the dogs thinks it means I want to play with him, and it feels absolutely ridiculous. Nothing better than a little of the absurd to bring you back into your body, eh? I just hope being holed up and immobile for a few weeks doesn’t make me too weird…