Not Writing

Sometimes you don't write. Sometimes, you can't.

When I was on vacation, I didn’t write at all.

Writing is how I decode lived experience. If I don’t write about it, life feels like a bunch of stuff happening. Not writing disabuses me of the notion that I am the human equivalent of a planet orbiting within an ordered solar system, because it becomes swiftly clear that the universe is an infinite chaos through which I am hurtling, and I am space junk.

Still, not writing has its merits. For starters, I am reminded of how much I love to write when I return home to frantically claw open my laptop. Also, by not writing, I don’t dwell in reflection, but existential immediacy, which pries me out of my head in order to participate. Finally, not writing creates room in my brain for unexamined content, to be harvested when I start writing again.

However, now that I’m home, raring to go, it seems my time in Italy has taken an immediate backseat to all the terrifying egregious shit that happened since I left. The overturning of Roe v. Wade, the defense of praying in public high school, stripping the EPA of protective powers, yet another unarmed Black man gunned down by cops, a mass shooting with a legally acquired high-capacity weapon at a Fourth of July parade… all of these and other national devastations not on the list make my story about the sassy cheese lady in Parma seem frivolous.

I will to hold onto that story for another day, because aside from this long-winded disclaimer, this will be another day I don’t write. It’s true, vacation’s may over, but being home, well, there’s just so goddamn much to unpack.