Intense

[vaneramos]

What an intense week this has been. Enthusiasm for my new plan has not abated. The pattern of my energy has been radically different. I wake up in the morning thinking about story ideas, or going back to school. During the commute to and from Fergus when I usually listen to news and commentary on CBC, instead I want silence in which to plan and contemplate. I look forward to getting home so I can do research, network and brainstorm. Today I had in mind starting to work on a prospective journalistic piece, but when it came time to make calls and possibly set up an interview, I was terrified. Instead I looked up some more resources while eating stew from the slow cooker.

Later I walked to the café at a brisk pace, had some hot chocolate with Baileys, and wrote. It was intense! intense! poetry and storytelling delving into deep ideas and dark places, raw places seldom visited. I kicked and dug at some of those ideas, trying to draw out their power.

After a thousand words or so, I wandered home. Downtown was quiet for a Thursday evening, dark, shining and wet. I saw stores and signs in a new way. Through an open door where there was no shop, I glimpsed an Asian man in a lighted kitchen labouring over a table covered with unidentifiable products. Food? Plastic? All I absorbed was the raw energy of his endeavour. It resonated with my own naked emotions.

I'm dispelling a fog that has hung around my mind forever. The revealed landscape of my own passion is rugged and terrifying. I'm tempted to retreat into the comfortable fog, familiar patterns of avoidance. That would be an easier life for the time being, but it is not sustainable. Besides, it's not what I really want. I don't remember the last time I was so focused, when the fabric of days seemed to unfold steadily toward a purpose. Can I sustain this?