Yesterday was one of those not-so-good writing days. I probably wrote three paragraphs in six hours. I snacked incessantly, took multiple breathers on my roof, and tried repeatedly to convince myself that committing a life to anything other than telling stories would be a hell of a lot…easier.

Most of the day was spent drowning in an ever swirling wormhole of unnecessarily over detailed plot mechanics. How could a man from Eastern Europe meet a woman from North Africa during World War II, and how could they have children who would eventually start a new life in America? This backstory would seem relatively simple to figure out, but an insatiable curiosity led to 54 open tabs, multiple lunches and an eventual state of high anxiety. At twilight, I closed my laptop, disappointed in my three paragraph progress, a frustration calcifying my bones into boulders.

Last night around Midnight, in a cab ride back home, the driver asked me what you call it when little droplets fall casually from the sky. “Sprinkling,” I said. He laughed at me. “Sprink-ling,” he echoed back in his thick accent, enjoying the way in which the syllables escaped his mouth. “People always say, oh God, it’s raining! It’s pouring! But sometimes it’s just sprinkling, and then it will pass.”

I asked him where he was from. He proceeded to tell me the story of how his father from North Africa studied abroad in Eastern Europe during World War II. That’s where his father met his mother. They fell in love, moved back to North Africa together, and had children who eventually moved to America in hopes of a better life. Imagine my mouth hitting the bottom of that cab. He smiled at me when I left. “Thanks for listening,” he said.

Martha Graham once said to Agnes DeMille that her only responsibility as an artist was to “keep the channel open.”

I take that to mean when you feel like you can no longer write, no longer speak, no longer sing or paint or play or dance, you can still listen. You can receive. That synchronicity is divine.

This life is indeed filled with a blessed unrest.

It is too easy to say, “It’s raining! It’s pouring!”

Some days it’s just sprinkling.

And then it will pass.

Photo By Shannen Norman