I’m Waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime
Reflecting on my past life and it doesn’t have much time
‘Cause at 5 o’clock, they take me to the Gallows Pole
The sands of time for me are running low
If writing feels like anything, it feels like that Iron Maiden song. It’s why every time I begin to write, I have a liberating thought: I have nothing left to write; I am finally free! I wallow in the infinite sand-ness of time for a whole deathless minute before gagging on the familiar ad-nausea: hating myself for writing badly feels better than hating myself for not writing at all.
And with that acquired taste of recidivism, I begin.
Writing is a one-person heartbreak. Writer’s block, the anesthetic.
I have artificially sweetened my writing blocks by writing about them. This is not another of those. I am lying. Of course, it is. Every one of them is. But this is also my coming to terms with being unable to write the way some people come to terms with God.
By becoming comfortable with not knowing.
But we are making fiendish attempts to put an end to that. We’ve prompts, exercises, talismans, and rummaging through the Internet for inspiration—technically, research. And I have tried ’em all.
Art’s beginning to look more like a Godman’s work and less like God’s.
Art is the last remnant we have left to understand religion. It’s the waning flicker of love just before waxing into the formula of labels. The tiny light is all we have in our attempt to spot God. Instead, we are trying on blindfolds, enquiring deeply: “what other colors do they come in?”
The world is full of magic things, delicately Waiting for our senses to grow sharper. Art is what we produce during the Wait.
And that is all I know after the many days of writing and as many of being unable to (write).
To shut the fuck up and Wait.
Waiting is not lazy. It’s the highest trust. For a humanity that gives God a timeline to show up, Waiting is the only refuge. And it is in Waiting, hallowed shall be thy name.
What do you see when you look at the Mona Lisa?
I see one artist’s sixteen-year Wait to see her Smile.
Meditations 
(Allen Shaw is an illustrator, animator and storyteller..) Allen was once expressing what is the process of art to him, and he said it is like catching a fish- the old school way, sitting by yourself with a fishing rod.. “some day you come home empty handed, some day you catch a small one, other day may be big, and some lucky day you catch a gold fish, keep waiting for that gold fish”