Ars bloggica.

We're home from walking the dog.

Me: I gotta blog. I gotta think of something to blog about.

The historian: . . . right--

Me: I don't think you understand how hard that is! Pulling a topic out of thin air.

TH: --I do get it. Because I never do it.  Whereas I, when I write, I just have to rely on . . . (rustling--he's in the kitchen, looking for an article in the paper. Or something.) . . .

Me: [what? facts? research?]

TH: (faintly)...things.

Me: [--and there it is.]

Lost.

I fear I have lost my blogging mojo.

I, who love the blog.

I am worried about this, because it feels like the thin end of the wedge to losing writing altogether.

If I can't drum up a little sentence or ten to write on a daily or every-other-daily basis, what then?

For blogging stood in as a proxy for writing proper. Kept me at it. Was in the near vicinity of other writing. Poetry, if you must know.

Today, I could have written about: the birth of a new grandson (yesterday). A funeral (today). A movie (The Town). A pile of new books. My Moleskine collection in which I can never quite locate the relevant notes I took at that one meeting. The farmer's market. The new/old Rock Band version my youngest son found. Having a grandson over while his folks were at the hospital with his new youngest brother. The pressing need to locate new restaurants to frequent.

There was a time when any one of those could have been a blog post.

I just feel the need to say it: some little writing space is closing off in my life, I don't like it, it actually makes me feel a little cold inside.

I'm going to find a way back in. I think I need to.

. . . and out.

Please, shut up.

For the past couple of days, I've found myself monumentally bored with every possible thing I might have to say in a blog-shaped utterance called a "post." Here's what happened: I went back in the archives to find out when, exactly, our Great Mouse Invasion was (I didn't find it, so whatever date I put in that last post--totally made up).

First of all, this exercise made me very glad I have kept this blog--there is a record of my days there, and things I would never remember had I not written it. Second of all, I found a lot of things to like in the writing, which is a good feeling.

At least, it's a good feeling at first, because after that, and third of all, I felt an overwhelming, existential nausea overcome me. What is all the crap I fill my days with of late? Why are there no charming little essays, manifesti, letters to inanimate objects, whatever, that come to mind? Moreover, why is my life so crowded with obligations I can't seem to remember to take care of? And avoidance--why are my hours so powerfully controlled by my urge to avoid whatever it is that's at hand, needing to be done?

I know, it's insufferable. As Robert Lowell said, "I myself am hell." Not to mention, hell on other people.

So that--this absurd state of funk, for absolutely no good reason, really--that's why I haven't blogged for a couple of days. But now: I finished a draft of the paper my colleague and I are writing. I hung up all my clothes. I turned in my travel papers to be reimbursed. I don't know, the day looks brighter.

In the meantime, I have found another possible alternative career--ghost Twitterer.