The library is where I am now and where I'm planning to go most days. It's a medium-sized library two and a half flights up, inside a big building, Palais de Rumine. The first time I came, I missed the library and ended up in an atrium full of Museum of Natural History-style taxidermied mammals and birds. There's also a cafe in here, with the most affordable sandwiches in Lausanne.
The reading room at the library has long blond wood tables (no veneer here) with individual reading lamps and laptop plugs. It's perfectly quiet. In the past nearly two years, it's been hard for me to write. Sometimes it has felt like I've forgotten how I ever got words onto the page, turned pages into a cohesive something. I have felt stuck, unable to make anything. But I've also felt trapped by the obligations that my writing has produced in my life: papers, screenplays, reports, treatments, stories, instructional resources... more and more, the obligations began to overwhelm me, and I wished for the freedom of pre-graduate school life. Had the last few years of my life been a mistake? I thought, if I could only have a semester free of work, free of new obligations, I could catch up, I could finish. But I also thought that I was kidding myself: that something deeper was wrong.
Well, maybe it was, maybe it is: I looked at the wikipedia page for "Writer's Block"; a neurologist thinks she's found a brain-related explanation. All kinds of things can make the creative mind falter and struggle. But this is about more than creativity, it's about catching up, getting organized, getting free: working. And even when I can't find anything else to inspire me, I am inspired by a desire for my friends and loved ones to see me productive, thriving; not failed, not lazy. Working.
So, I sit here at a desk on the mezzanine of the reading room at the library and I type. It's mostly fits and starts, with some bursts of inspiration. Doing silly things like writing emails or posting to my tumblr sometimes helps if I'm feeling stuck. I don't know if I believe the neurologist, but still, it reminds me of what people say about re-learning to walk or talk after a brain trauma, at least metaphorically: your neural pathways adapt, networks shift, and (hopefully) some day your limbs or words are your own again. Until then, I'll keep working through the fits and starts and see what I can make happen.
