Rubble

Source

I am suffering from terrible writer’s block. I keep deleting and restarting posts. Nothing I write is interesting or significant. I don’t see how it will matter to anyone. I don’t know what I have left to say that I haven’t said before, that people who have been around for a while won’t have already read, or have endlessly rehashed for themselves. I don’t know what I could say now, from my position way out here in year 13, to someone just arriving in this space.

In desperation, I type into a search bar: how many days since January 12, 2012. The answer comes up instantaneously (of course): 4,639.

I surprise myself by gasping out loud. (gol, is there an emoji for that, I wonder)

4,639 days of thinking, talking, writing, dreaming about her.

111,351 hours.

6,678,488 minutes.

Of course, I haven’t been thinking about her for every one of those minutes, but every one of those minutes has passed without her here and with part of me always feeling that.

I remember sitting on the couch and waiting out the minutes of an hour. Like, literally being conscious of every minute that passed to make up that hour and then wondering how I could make it through the rest of the day, let alone the next hour.

That was probably about 111,255 hours ago.

A block is something that obstructs a path or a thought.

Blocks can also be used to build.

Block is a noun and a verb.

Writer’s block: a frustrating condition where no words – or only bad and useless words – come.

Writers block: block by block they pile up words to build a new structure, to make something new: a story, a home, an imagined life – to hold something in: a memory, a dream, a wish, an illusion – or to keep something out: a memory, a nightmare, a fear.

Block by block these 6 million minutes have piled up around me. Some I have deliberately moved and sorted and arranged, compiling them into something I can live with and in, a story I can tell about what happened to us and how we carried on. Some blocks stay strewn around, rubble, minutes I could do nothing with or in but cry and rage, when there was no sense to be made.

Blocking is one of the final steps in quilting, when you work to square off and flatten the sewn together pieces before you bind the quilt.

Today is a rubble day and I have no way to move this pile of six million minutes into any kind of pattern let alone square it off and bind it into something beautiful and meaningful.

Somehow, still, I’ve written 450 words.

Block by block. (Bird by bird.)

I’ll stop here and hope there is something you can do with this block of text. Something you can build. Or at least something you can recognize as you sit in your own pile of rubble, wondering what to do with it all.

How many days, hours, minutes has it been for you? How do those minutes, hours and days weigh on you? What have you built out of them?