How can I have writer’s block if I don’t even approach the writing? Maybe I have just been avoiding the attempt in avoidance of the threatened ghost of just such an affliction. Well, I may as well ride it out by biding my time through the illness. Rilke says you must be patient; as your own doctor, you must be patient, and sometimes there is not more than this that you can do. I am trying to incline myself to the philosophy that we must abide and even pursue that which is difficult (as Rilke counsels); thus I am tapping my old ways on the shoulder – in my old ways, I sidestep the things that make me tight in the throat and addled in the mind – and asking them to please move aside. I have some responsibility, I think, to do something more with this life than sleep and sigh it away; though there yet remains a place for both these things – it is just that they cannot be the only tenants of the house. They are not too rich, and it is better to split the rent more ways than two.