Sometimes the words hide behind a brick wall. You are standing at the wall, staring, trying to knock it over with your mind. You are pushing at the bricks with your thoughts, trying to break the mortar and send them tumbling backward. This is foolish. Thoughts cannot push down a wall.

Then you take a deep breath and you assail the wall with aspirations. You sit at the wall, pretending at patience. You are sitting in the gathering stew of expectation, letting the feeling of wanting to write swell until it is a physical thing that might swallow you and the space you are sitting in and the wall itself. As if the wall itself might be digested in your patient, honest intention. The words stack up. The wall does not move.

And then you are cursing the wall, hurtling insults, outlandish, brutal and impolite. You batter the wall with words of your own, but these are not the helpful kind of words. These words diminish you and make the wall loom larger.  You bash yourself against the brick with impatience, spreading bruises and injury. You are hurting now, self-inflicted, but your pain is no kind of key that can pass through this wall.

Be still. Gather your wits. Consider the situation. There are words. There is a wall. The words are piled up like treasure against the other side of the wall. And there is you, standing on the wordless side, thinking, wishing, cursing and pressing. It is not working.

You cannot push over a wall with your mind. You can’t break mortar with aspiration. You may curse, cajole and plead with the wall, but the wall is not moved.

Try something different. Grab a hammer. Pick up the pin. Write.