Seeking II

“Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.” William James

I am happiest when I am writing. I have an office at the top of the tower of a downtown Victorian house. When I am there, writing or reading or just thinking, I am happy and content, “deeply and vitally alive.” In the last few years, however, I have gone there seldom. Why? That is a question that I have no answer for. Every once in a while I think what a waste of our money and a waste of a wonderful space for an artist or writer who would really appreciate it. I say to myself, or to the owner of the gallery, that soon I will start coming in regularly. When? When I send off the novel I have been working on for the last 15 years? When it is warmer or it is cooler? When I don’t have any chores to do? I tell others that I don’t have the energy to start another novel. I am too old. I struggle for words. Maybe this blog will satisfy. At a book sale or a used book store, I see the thousands of discarded novels that no one will ever read again. The world doesn’t need another novel, at least one by a writer with mediocre talent. I do comfort myself with the analogy created by Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea. She likened all literature to a lake fed by small streams like her and mighty rivers like Shakespeare.