Circles on Circles on Circles
Elizabeth Caravella
Keywords: writer's block
Categories: (De)Constructing Writing; Arting/Crafting/Making in a Crisis
Transcript
I’ve had this piece in my head for about a month or two now
Just kind of chewing on it, waiting, sitting at my computer
Watching that little cursor at the top of the page just
Blink
Blink
Blink
And every time I think about it
Every time I think about, oh, maybe this time is the time that I can sit down
I can figure out what it is I wanna say
What point is buried deep in all the circling, circling thoughts inside my head
And yet, there’s that cursor
Blink
Blink
Blinking at me
Just put some words on the page
That’s all you need to do
But something about writing needs these thoughts to be more concrete
Needs them to make more sense
To have some kind of resounding poignant moment
Where all the pieces and paragraphs come together
And everything finally clicks
Instead, that cursor
Blink
Blink
Blinks
And I continue pacing, circles on circles on circles around my rooms
Around my house
Trying to figure out how to connect the dots in my head
So that they might make sense to somebody else
We started this pandemic back in the United States
Right beforehand, I went on my first-ever interviews
Visiting places, figuring out, meeting people in person,
Some of the different avenues my life might take,
Some of the different directions my research might go,
And eventually, as I was circling and circling and circling these ideas,
I picked one I liked
We were excited
It was time for a big move
Somewhere new
Ontario
And that excitement died
You know, over that week of spring break
Where it was supposed to just be three weeks
Then it was the end of the semester
Now, I’m going into my second tenure-track fall semester
And the only time I’ve been on campus
My new home
My new place
Was during that first in-person interview
And so I pace, circles on circles on circles
Trying to figure out
Why that’s significant
What it means about my life
My career
Everything we picked up and moved across a border
All the different kinds of extra paperwork we’ve needed to show
To gather
All the different kinds of paperwork that now make me exist as a person
In not only my home country
But this other new one, too
Even now, when I decided to pick up this microphone,
A microphone I got doing work at my house for this new position,
I’m pacing, circles on circles on circles
Down my hallway
Through the living room
Across the kitchen
As the thoughts in my head make circles on circles on circles
Never really coming together in quite the way I want
Like tangential lines
The connections between these ideas
Seem to come closer and closer and closer when I’m thinking about them
But then that cursor’s there
And it just
Blink
Blink
Blinks at me
And I can never make them come together enough to actually write them down
And in this time
I’ve been trying to figure out where I wanna go
While everything’s been closed
What I wanna do
When I can’t even really explore
I’ve met the new people I work with once, maybe twice in person
But instead of actually getting to know each other
Seeing their faces, their expressions
Learning how we might all work together in a collaborative space
We’re separated by screens
We talk mostly via text
We make little emoji reactions on Slack
Something to show each other that, yeah,
We do like each other,
Even though we’ve never actually gotten to work together
And so I pace around my house
These circles
These unending circles
And that cursor
Blink
Blink
Blinks at me
And the page stays blank.
Bio
Elizabeth Caravella is an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Writing Department at York University in Ontario. She earned her PhD in Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University, and her current research revolves around digital rhetoric and game studies. She is currently working on a manuscript examining dimensionality & embodiment in virtual reality.