You Don't Get A Choice (written amid a months-long excruciating art block)

 

My hands don't work anymore. Some people say it is a part of it, a piece of "what is joy without sadness", a crumb of "an artist without their ability to art". God made us and said, "Here, this is your gift. But this is also your curse." The thing you love most is within you. Do what you can to externalize it. Keep it in and it will explode into a million little bits. Get it out and the world will burn with you. P.S. You don't get a choice.

You are special. You have something rare in you. You can die with it- or, you can choose to kill everyone everyday with it. And they will still live. Because your suffering is their gift, is their journey into the woods. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. The woods are lovely, but they are dark and deep. The woods are dark and deep, but they are lovely. P.S. you don't get a choice.

Your hands don't work anymore. But it is temporary. Thing is, 2 weeks is temporary, but 2 years are also temporary. Your mind contains a lot of things. But what to do? Your hands are roots of the banyan tree: strong, far-reaching and deep. You stay still. You can only see, only feel what is already there. What is new in that? How could you call yourself an artist when you only see what can be seen? Your eyes cannot search any further, no matter how hard you try. P.S. you don't get a choice.

Your eyes are teary, small transparent pearl-ish droplets of salt and pain. You are not moving but you are still wincing from the pain. For an artist, staying still is often what hurts the most. Your thoughts are tram rides across the city of wild possibilities but it stops nowhere. Do you regret getting in? Do you regret leaving things behind? P.S. your choices have been made.

It has been 2 months now. You want your hands to work. You try hard to move your fingers but they don't feel the purpose. Something has died within you, or lost consciousness. Your nervous system, perhaps. Life got in the way, perhaps. You think and you think and you think but that is all you do.

Wait.

Just wait.

Let your hands awake. If they don't, use your mouth, use your legs. Your hands are not all you have been given. You have a gift. Your gift is your passion. It is a source of all other gifts you will realize with the flow of time. Your curse, will be the absence of it. P.S. there is no choice to make.