I didn't blog last night. I was depressed, a little. I was in The First Circle of Despair. I'd made the mistake of reading through some of the stuff I'd done during my writer retreat before driving home. It was rubbish. Hence the despair. You spend three whole days devoted to the stuff and it turns out rubbish! I mean! ...
It's OK. I've had a sleep. I'm home. There are advantages to being home. One of them is going for the mandatory walk with the dog, and the wife, if I can put it like that without, you know, offending anyone. One of them always has something sensible or encouraging to say.
But that's for another blog.
It took me FIVE HOURS to drive home yesterday afternoon. Of course it was my own fault, my own choice. I plotted a route designed to avoid the worst of the incoming weather (snow from the north), the Friday night madness on the motorway and the toll for the Severn Bridge. I had no money in my wallet! OK? So I went up the A38, onto the M5, off the M5 at Gloucester and onto the A40 to Ross-on-Wye. What could go wrong with that? I checked the travel maps on-line before I left. There were no reported incidents. Road works. Queues of traffic. Filton. M5. A40. I must have spent the best part of an hour crawling along at an average of no more than ten miles an hour and it took me over two hours to get to Abergavenny. It takes half an hour if you use the Severn Bridge.
By Brecon, though, the road, the car and my mind were perfectly one, attuned to the greater reality all around. It was one of those out of the body experiences. I could do no wrong. Careful. Do not try this at home. But when it happens it is a gift. Part of the awareness of the greater reality is an awareness of the unpredictability, let's say, of other drivers and their behaviour. Perfect separation from danger is one of the feature of this state of transportation. Approaching Llandovery I passed the monument to the tragedy, last century, no, the century before that, when a stage-coach drove off the cliff in foul weather. It reminds one of the possibilities.
A quick stop in Llandovery and back on the road again, back in the groove, running on rails.
What has this to do with writing? This: Frustration; Slog; Nothing going right; all of these were surpassed in time by the sublime. It can happen. It does happen. It will happen. I got home last night tired but strangely elated and aware that there were other possibilities - other realities - and that there was something worth striving for. This morning I was confirmed in this new optimism by two things:
- My daughter's stall in Beaconsfield Village Market (FaceBook pages):
Crafty Bella
- A Neil Gaiman short story on YouTube:
- May Tale (It's brilliant.)
@neilhimself
Ends
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