Midnight

Ok, it's not actually midnight. It is pushing on 2am infact. I am trying to write the abstract for my thesis seminar and I am just not inspired at all. I am looking about for an epiphany, something that will magically make my work finished so I can go to bed. I could just go to bed, I suppose, but that would be abmitting defeat.

Struggling to write this makes me think about all the other things I am struggling to write. Things that safely live in my bedroom at present where I can't be distracted by them when I should be working. Things that live less safely in my brain...

Focus. Focus, focus, focus, focus, focus.

After great pain a formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
~ Emily Dickenson