Breaking the seal

This post constitutes a desperate effort to end a two-month literary drought. If I just start typing, perhaps something akin to writing may emerge, despite the objections of my inner Truman Capote.

It's not that I've had nothing to say, and it isn't that I haven't been bursting with the urge and intent to write...no, the problem has been at the bio-chemical level. The act of writing for me has usually been an act of capturing, harnessing and transcribing into words my mind's equivalent of fleeting musical notes -- all I've had to work with these days, however, is my mind's equivalent of a steady dial tone. O distant uncooperative muse...

There are times, however, when the only way to break the seal is to smash the bottle. This is one of those times.

Don't take the above as griping, however. The reason for my recent inability to focus on writing is that my energies and emotions have been drastically redirected due to the recent birth of my son. Those who already have kids need no further explanation, and for those without kids...there is no amount of explaining that can do the experience justice. With blogging being a solipsistic activity to begin with, I can only convey my own perspective on being a new dad.

For starters, it is like nothing I ever could have imagined. Being there with my wife through labor and delivery, going respectively from a sense of fear and helplessness to a sudden mind-shattering endorphin spike, and losing my heart to this new little person at first sight, represented a cataclysmic shift in my internal universe. I'm still the same ol' me, just an upgraded, massively sleep-deprived, and less trivial version. (Retro geeks can download an iso CD image of the previous me via a torrent at www.thepiratebay.org.)

So there you have it. A blog post from this keyboard after weeks of the author fearing it would never happen, hopefully followed by more of a less navel-gazing nature. Watch your step...those shards of glass can hurt.


______


Acknowledgement


This post did not occur in a vacuum. I had no idea of what to write about until after talking on the phone to Peter, comparing notes about writing as well as new fatherhood. Some of the material above came about verbally during the give-and-take of that conversation. Additionally, communing with a kindred literary spirit in of itself is always good for stimulating the writing gland.