Can't

Back in high school (a loooong time ago...I'm surprised I can remember that far back), I submitted an essay in a writing class;  it was about depression.  I was listing the sad ills of my depressed state, one of which was:  "I can't write..."  My writing teacher scribbled in the margin--  "But you're writing here, aren't you?"  Touche. 

Then again, there's writing, and there's Writing.  When I scribble pages upon pages of my personal angst, that's writing.  What I want to create is "Writing:"  Polished essays about things that matter.  I don't do that too much anymore.  Partly because I seem to have lost the muse...and partly because the things that matter are so fucked up that I can't even go there.

The world is insane, and screwed up, and unbelievably damaged.  The USA has led it into a place of unfathomable decline; a place where bullying, crassness, chest-beating and ignorance rule.  Where education is disrespected (yet, we are all told we need a college degree get a job that earns better than slave wages;) where the desire for peace is labeled  weakness; where "leaders" guide legions of sheep-like followers wherever the politics of fear,  aggression and contempt for  "otherness" can take them. 

Our country is a mess; and it's been a mess so long that we are beginning to accept this hideous tangle of dishonesty, cyber-bullying, blowhard policy and collusion with unfriendly foreign powers as "normal."  We understand that our nation has become a tragi-comedy on the world stage; but we can't do anything about it, so we just retire studiously into our own little lives and do our best to ignore the insanity.  We are not Don Quixote.  We're too smart (too exhausted?  too disheartened?) to tilt at windmills.  So we just...don't. 

I don't find anything motivating about this state of affairs.  All it inspires is disbelief, then anger, then hopelessness.  That kind of muse makes for bitter, cynical writing.  Not only am I tired of dwelling in that place, but I firmly believe that it's the last thing anyone needs to read right now.  It only adds fuel to the fire that is consuming everything good, positive and hopeful about our society and our world.

So when I say "I can't write" these days, my reasons are sound.  And sad.