Go there. Totally go there.

I've always heard that tortured writers write the best stuff. Actually what I've always heard is that tortured artists create the best art, but I've heard it applied to a variety of specific art forms, including writing.

I love to write. My blog, often, is just me ranting or dreaming, but I think there's some good stuff in here. I've got some other writings that contain really good stuff. And I'd have to say all of my best stuff came about when I was either suffering terribly (as from my deep desire to be a cowboy-mountain man instead of a cube bunny) or when I was swept up with passion on a subject near and dear to my heart.

I also have to say I tend to blog most often when I'm feeling either deeply tortured or particularly joyous about something.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how deeply I sank into my own misery over the last few years in my longing for another life. Not that my life is bad. It's quite good. It's just that often I feel like I'm in the wrong place and time, that's all. Anyway, often during those most intense moments I had (what seemed to me) the most brilliant insights, and created vivid imagery in my own head by blending fantasy with reality. What I'm trying to say is, I wish I'd put these down in writing because they'd make a damn good book. Actually some of them I did put down in writing, and fortunately the others are still burned into my memory so there may be hope yet for recalling the emotion that brought them into the world in the first place.

I've been relatively unmoved for a good many months now. I've managed to keep the cabin fantasy subdued and settle into a routine at work. This is good and bad. Good, obviously, because I'm not constantly fighting an emotional battle between what is and what I wish for. Bad, however, because it feels too routine, and a little bit like I've given up my dreams. Bad also because without the torture I have nothing pushing me to write or have those deep insights which bring me a sort of joy that I just can't put into words. Strange as it may sound, going deep enough into one's own world and having such insights or creative flurries or whatever they are is actually a kind of natural high. And when I have written as a direct result of such a high I've always gotten compliments and been told things like, "wow, you really need to be a writer."

I guess its in these moments that I can truly write from the heart, and maybe people pick up on that.

So I'm starting to actually miss being tortured, not for the tortured feeling itself which is miserable, but from the exhilaration, the creation, the self discovery it brings. Of course this makes me wonder if it's really the cabin I ever wanted in the first place, or if that was just my subconscious choosing something I could be so close to but not actually have in order to induce maximum, prolonged torture for the purest and highest high. :0) Hey, it IS possible, and if nothing else I try to be open minded and consider all angles.

So tonight I sat down and tried to put myself back in that place. I tried to recall some of my best moments and put down into words things that have been haunting me for too long. I closed my eyes and retreated within. In my mind I walked in the sand by the creek. I sat on my horse looking out over the ridge. I stood at the window peering out across the darkening meadow. My senses came alive and I was there. The scent of a moist pine forest after a summer rain. The texture of rough-hewn planks beneath my bare feet. The splash of icy snow melt on my face at the break of dawn. The sight of a moose ambling in the distance. It felt so good. The hard part is coming back.