The Block

By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

BONG and I are friends. We communicate occasionally and update each other and the progress of what we currently do. Several times he would talk about writing a book about his thoughts on art and culture, and its potential to change society. His main expression is interpretative dance which he executes in his own spontaneous rhythms. Once in a while, he would express himself in poetry.

But he never got down to writing his thoughts. He suspected it to be a writer’s block, but his real dilemma is how to organize into words his vast experience and inspirations for his art and practice. What he does is he sketches on a notebook, the energies he picks up from people. The drawings sometimes depict a composite figure, and sometimes impressions that individual persons make on him.

Sometimes he has a lot of things in his mind that includes initiatives from his friends on subjects like meditation, healing, reading the future, channeling and spiritual endeavors with people he chooses to collaborate. Because he is engaged with so many activities and so many people at the same time, he hardly has time to focus on what he really wants to do. It is not also clear to him what he really wants to do.

I recall reading a book, The Artist’s Way written by Julia Cameron at a time when I was having difficulty focusing on what I really wanted. If there is one thing that helped me in that book it is the practice of taking down your thoughts on paper, which the author calls Morning Pages. These are unedited random thoughts that you write each morning as soon as you wake up. I did this initially for a month, and when I reviewed what I wrote during that month, it provided me with a glimpse of where my thoughts were streaming, enabling me to understand myself better, and indicating a direction that I should put my energies into. Writing became easier for me as I continued the practice.

Since he was familiar with the book, I asked him to try and write down his random thoughts, unedited, for a month. At least he would glimpse a part of himself, at best find a direction he can explore. To encourage him to write, I made him a template, just a simple format he could easily follow, something that he can aid his memory to gather back the data from his mind. I did it again for a second time. I made follow-ups on his progress.

Today, he said, he is priming to get down to it. That was five days ago. The priming could take a year, and the words will wait forever to get down on paper, like his first attempt.

Perhaps it is a writer’s block, as he suspects. To me it is a matter of doing real time on that blank space.

I suspect that Bong really wanted to write his thoughts into words, but the words just floated around in his head like sheep being counted by Mr. Count to force him to sleep. Nothing seemed to descend on the notepad, as if the words dreaded it like a destination that will capture their essential quality, and be kept there as captives in between commas, brackets and periods, like the essences of flowers captured inside bottles of perfume.

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