Abeyance, or the turning of the tide

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Back in the Before Times, when I was occasionally productive, there would be spells of inertia between projects that I called the turning of the tide, during which my creative energy/attention ebbed and regrouped before coming back up the shore.

This is normal. Most of us are not Anthony Trollope or Pablo Picasso, churning out work after work nonstop our entire lives.* (Of course, they were actually responding to the market for their work; someone was waiting to pay for that next installment of The Last Chronicle of Barset or the latest set of Minotaur lithographs. Hold that thought.)

We joke about TASK AVOIDANCE being the key Precept of Lichtenbergianism, but we all know that to move forward we have to work on something, and that’s where I’m stuck. My mental image for TASK AVOIDANCE is like the Taoist metaphor of water: shapeless, yet all shapes; flowing, seeking exit when blocked; soft and yielding, yet inexorable in its ability reshape its surroundings. When one project is too much to face, or at a point where GESTALT is called for, or for some other reason, my attention simply seeks the next easiest thing like water seeks the lowest point.

Now, however, not one of my rotating list of avoidable projects provides an easy entry. The GALAXY project for the burn? I’m waiting for the engineering team to report back on how we’re going to power 200 rings of EL wire. (Not to mention, the burn itself is not a sure thing.)

The labyrinth refurbishment literally has to wait for warmer weather. The fence art project needs more room for me to measure and cut the fabric panels, and that too requires warmer weather to set up tables outside.

As for Lichtenbergianism for Kids, I grind away getting illustrations finished, but now I’m having thoughts about rewriting it from start to finish because I’m not sure I have hooked the young reader with my scintillating style.

Ugh.

Then I keep coming back to the hard, bare fact that no one is begging me to finish L’ism for Kids. This is not self-pity, just a recognition that I’m lazy in the extreme — if I wanted to finish it badly enough, I would, without an editor/agent/publisher haranguing me.**

Okay, back to work. And I promise not to write another post about not getting the work done, at least for a while.

Return is the movement of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.

All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

— Tao te ching, new English version by Stephen Mitchell

MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT.

* see footnote 18, p. 7

** If any agents/editors/publishers would like to harangue me, I am open to suasion.