I’ve got that itch again. It’s familiar. it’s that spot where only a certain movement, a certain angle, a focus of will and intention can scratch. Yep. It’s time to write again. I’m peering out into the great new year of 2024 and trying to make out the opaque images in the deep shadow and fog of the future.
Last year was quite a good year in writing for me. Gods of IMAGO was in the editing stage, and released mid August. I always feel exhausted after that process. Not that the editing and publishing process is so exhausting, it’s that the whole thing (the conceiving, sketching, building, writing, re-writing, re-writing, etc….) it’s this whole thing that saps the life out of my well of imagination. It’s like a void, an emptiness that just needs to be… well, refilled. And that’s what has happened. That, in fact, is the sudden, specific, actually longed-for, feeling… that familiar “itch.” And unlike some dreaded symptom once thought in remission now with terror returning…. I’m actually deeply relieved. No, that’s not even true. I’m actually ECSTATIC! Like scrooge the day after the ghosts or Flacco after the Browns called him up ….
There I was sitting empty headed in my car on my way to Capital University where I teach – an hour drive – and the cogs, so rusted, feared frozen, eternally seized – right there as I drove, the great gears of my imagination suddenly… turned. At first it was a grind, but after two, three, four revolutions began to hum and whirl, quick, smooth, like the workings of a movie projector… a scene appearing… a solitary young woman coming before… kneeling? Well, that’s cool. Why is she there? To whom does she kneel? Why kneel? And before I know it I am Keats with his wonderful Grecian Urn asking and answering question after question. Good god! Don’t ask me how I got to Capital. Forgive me all the poor souls trapped behind or beside me as I plunged inward. Haha!
I was speaking to a dear writer friend recently, and we both agreed that it is not actually the publication of a thing that truly matters to a writer (any artist or creative). No, what matters the most, the true point of the spear of the matter lies in one simple question. Will “it” return? Will the empty well fill up again? From my last exhausted creative act…. the desert of desiccated land that follows – when I return from my wanderings of 40 days and 40 nights (the marketing and readings and Amazon Rankings and distribution this and reviewer that, soul-sucking door-to-door-brush-salesman-schmarmy ICK)… will there actually be water in the well? And to my great relief, and profound astonishment – there was, and I, like some lunatic psalmist leaping before his god.
May this year of 2024 fill you with all joy and peace as you step into the fog of the future. And may your well refill, and may that refilling give you joy and faith and of all things: HOPE. And when it does, refill, may you be forever thankful to your god .
Greg Belliveau 