finger-filters and the unconceived next

Is frustration a necessary offspring of writer's block? Or, differently posed, what do you call a cessation of creative output that is not accompanied by the maddening anxiety spurred by the prospect of never being able to write again?

If it is what it is, regardless of the quantity or quality of concomitant emotions, then I have writer's block. If it merely describes a lack of production, then yes I am afflicted by the Great Bane.

But there's this: I feel no dread. I fear no depletion of soul. The once maddening anxiety is now only a simpering nag--little pin-prick-pokes sufficient at best to pester-out this Nothingworld admission:

For what seems to be the life of me, I cannot tell a story of my own invention; but, even if it means the death of me, I am quite content resting on my withered and dry-bone laurel--that penniless symbol of my tiny contribution to the world of letters.

Let there be a moral here. A larger-than-me application to my few and dear readers. Let it have something to do with satisfaction and patience. Let it stand in lieu of the myth of lost time. Because there is always time for our next great thing. Because great things can happen in an instant--a wisp in the blue sky to be snatched for a second, admired, spoken of, then let to filter through fingers back into the blue, back into the wider world to dissipate and never gather again.

And let that be OK; let it be enough to keep us eager, not anxious, for the next stunning sentence of our stories.

It will come. Or not. Something may or may not surely come. I am ready for it all. Or nothing. Either way. I'll be OK.