The New Black

My brain went on vacation and refused to come back to work. Every day when I sit down trying to string the words together to finish writing the book, I am reminded of our old carabao yoked to a sled pulling me and my friends. We were a bunch of malnourished 8-year olds, so we didn't weigh much, but the carabao struggled at every step in pulling us. I don't know, maybe the carabao was more malnourished than us.

Lately I feel like that carabao-dragging and struggling. To come up with a word or a sentence, is like reeling in a fish that's barely biten the hook - no telling if you'll get it out of the water. "It should be easy," a friend said. "because you're writing what you know." I wish. The story is there, but what about resonance and flow? Even Stephen King insists on resonance.

I don't need imagination as much as inspiration, but more than inspiration, I need my brain functioning to a useful level.I have learned to live with melancholy, but lately, depression is the new black that seem to consistently color my thinking. Some people, like Lord Byron or Virginia Woolf, when they got depressed, they became more poetic and wrote more. My new black is not that efficient. When I am depressed, I don't sleep, and when I don't sleep I get depressed and even though I am walking and living, I am really dead. And I don't rise on the 3rd day either. I simply wait until a different color shows up, and hopefully it's not gray.

*Picture lifted from this site:http://www.travel-philippines.com/locations/palawan/3-sabang.htm