Anthill

I feel there is a calm right now, a stillness this mid-spring day that may be signaling turbulence ahead. I've been feeling stationary, inert, unable even to crack the file open on Drum, just to see where things are. Of course I know where they are. Of course I have every intention of moving past this stage, but I feel so damned under-confident, inept. I am fearful that I will open Drum only to find an an anthill of issues. I've built this thing too big in my mind and now it's spilling over the edge.

My house in Sri Lanka had an anthill growing in the back room out of a crack in the concrete, an edifice of hardened soil turrets and spires. Occasionally, I would spot one or two of the kingdom hustling a grain of sand along a developing edge to be lodged by mysterious design into structural relevance. I would wait for others to arrive, knowing full well that all were busying themselves along their intricate corridors, their staterooms and in the larger cavities I had witnessed momentarily before they were sealed from view. I learned not to disturb this little encased society. Breaking its train of thought brought a chaos to the house that would drive me away for hours.

And so it is with my writing these days, some vast honeycomb of a story building in the fractured recesses of my mind. I fear to disrupt this inner toil; and yet I'm fully cognizant of the need to break this thing open to see where these tunnels lead, where they might end.