Mavis will save us

I don’t like it when my face tenses up with that little smile that hugs your jawbone too tight in the corners to be an expression of pleasure. When it happens you’re always trying to find something to do with your hands, clasping them behind your neck then around my knee then folding them in your lap. You know how every part of you sits, weight of ankle on ankle, slight tilt of the hip; your body is a fuzz of pressures. Every word is whispered a thousand times before it can be spoken, and the possibilities multiply into a fog. You’re amorphous and immobile, human static.

“There is only one way: Go within. Search for the cause, find the impetus that bids you write. Put it to this test: does it stretch out its roots in the deepest place of your heart?”

Most of my actions are controlled by habit or convention, programmed responses to external pressure. How many times a day do I actually will an action as opposed to submitting to it? How many of my actions (not just writing) have any roots in my heart at all?

A tree is a solid trunk that branches off at either end; all its possibilities come from itself, not from outside. Know what you need to do, and the rest is just white noise.