Mental Constipation

Last week, I shared that I’ve been experiencing what I can only describe as an almost complete standstill of mental activity. I’m not sure why that is, seeing as I still have a pulse and I’m generally rambling away about something or another; maybe it’s because I’m so intense that my mind has decided to give me the finger… maybe it’s decided to take a much needed break in  imaginary rehab. I don’t know… maybe it’s made in China. But the saga continues.

If you missed the first part, you didn’t miss much, but here are the second and third parts of my brain-dead manuscript: The Ramblings of Mental Constipation.

PART II

“Rows and rows of books were lined up in the self-improvement section and all of them promised happiness. Each one of them presented a solution to all the problems caused by capitalist society. Everyone had a theory. So many books guaranteed self-fulfilment. So, from where I stood, I couldn’t understand why so many people were unhappy?

I flicked through the pages of the newest bestseller. Another sham. No one knew anything. They just wanted to believe that they did. They wanted to believe that they could be happy in a society that kept everyone mooing along together, like herds of cows being steered along a path without really knowing where they were going and with only a vague idea of where they had come from. Their only point of focus was the promise of more fertile grazing grounds. But a promise was not a guarantee. In fact, it was more likely to be nothing more than a lie.”

I wrote that! I wrote that years ago as a start to the novel that would change modern day capitalist thinking. That was as far as I got.

I’ve just realized that this mental constipation has been with me for a long time. Or is it just laziness? I seem to have something to say, until it gets down to the writing part of ‘having a book that breaks boundaries and enlightens thousands’.

Bloody hell!

*****

This (below) was another book that I’d started writing and abandoned after rereading the first paragraph that I’d managed to throw up on the page.

“I woke up this morning feeling light, feeling peaceful and distant from the problems of the world. A light within shone brightly warming me completely and I felt like I was floating. I was trying to remember why such a feeling consumed me so.  Something great had occurred to me but I just couldn’t move my mind from its current state of bliss and force it to recall my past when it was so content with the present. But as I insisted, something in the deep recesses of my mind began to form; a shadow in the dark hazes of my inner psyche. And as an apparition slowly takes form, so did the revelation in my mind gradually take its shape until I could see it clearly. And in my moment of realization, all warmth faded away leaving me with a cold and an impenetrable fear so appalling, I felt every portion of my soul contort with horror. I was dead.”

If I’d picked this book up, and read that paragraph, I would’ve snorted and guffawed and muttered about how writers these days have absolutely no imagination and are using the same language that gave birth to the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Wilde to write simple, lacklustre and mind-numbing ‘stories’ that lacked imagination to further plunge this generation into the Dark Ages. I would’ve thrown the book over my shoulder, saying that it was overpriced garbage and then just wait for the movie adaptation to come out so I could download it illegally on my computer.

So I let it go. I’d rather not be a writer, than be a mediocre writer.

So dramatic. Just what the world needs…another self-proclaimed ‘tormented genius’. I think my work here is done for today.

*****

I’m tired. I’m stressed.

Nothing is happening. I feel like that dwarf in ‘Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ that has died, decomposed and is still clutching his book in the orc infested mines of Moria. I wonder if he had writer’s block before jotting down his final entry. ‘They are coming… they are here.’

The question is, was he speaking of the orcs or was he waiting for inspiration to drop down from the heavens and like me, felt that writing, even when there was nothing to say was better than not writing at all.

JRR Tolkien was a genius. And so is Peter Jackson. Maybe if I watch the films, some of their genius will rub off on me.

*****

Here is what I learnt from watching all three ‘Lord of the Rings’ films, back to back:

If I ever do IVF, I want Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd and Peter Jackson to be my sperm donors. Any combination of their genes would be good.

Oh and also, as a side-note, if you watch all three films in a row, you will not be able to feel your eyeballs.

*****

PART 3:

In the case of writer’s block versus the writer in her attempt to write something meaningful, we the world, find the writer to be the losing party. We, hereby, sentence her to a life over-eating and bingeing on anything deep fried and soaked in chocolate.

Or something just as likely to give her a coronary embolism within the next five years.

*****

In the words of someone who should’ve been given a medal a long time ago: Fuck this SHIT!!!

(END)