It happens to all guys, you know. Even the mouthiest guy in the bar will occasionally run out of things to say. The smack-talkingest dude on the basketball court will run out of clever insults and the career politician will have nothing to spout by way of self-promotion.

It happens. It’s intellectual impotence and we all experience it from time to time. Enjoy the uncommon silence. Go outside and listen to the birds sing or just savor the thick buzz of absolute nothingness.

To the best of my recollection, this will be the fourth column today I’ve started to write. The first was about cats. No, really. Cats. I was trying to explore the mysterious world of these soft-footed creatures that roam downtown Lewiston like a criminal gang.

One recent night, I saw a scruffy cat padding across Park Street with something clamped in its jaws. It moved quickly, eyes gleaming with a sort of cruel victory. It hustled its way across a parking lot and toward a pool of shadows. At the edge of those shadows, it was joined by another cat, this one bigger and scruffier. But there was no confrontation, no battle over turf. The cats paused as if in consultation. Whatever it was trapped inside the first cat’s mouth was still moving, twitching feebly as it died.

The cats consulted.

“Man, that’s a good score right there,” the bigger cat communicated in fuzzy cat language.

“Told you I’d get it done, dawg.”

“True dat. Let’s get off the street, though. Saw a big old bitch in this area a little while ago.”

“Word.”

They moved on. And it occurred to me that city cats are always on the prowl for product, just like your average drug dealer making weekend trips to Lawrence. City cats have their homies and their turf and their rivals. City cats live la vida loca because they have absolutely no other choice.

It’s an interesting concept but one that simply refused to catch fire. Some days, I could go on for pages and pages, inventing cat dialogue like Dr. Doolittle in the hood. Some days, but not this day. I had to abandon the idea, so now we’ll never know whether those Park Street kitties ever turned that twitching field mouse into a handsome profit.

I moved on and began a piece about dreams. Crazy dreams, busy dreams, the kind of dreams that make you wonder if the landscape inside your head might be the real world, after all.

I’ve been dreaming about the past a lot lately. People I haven’t thought of in 20 years are suddenly popping up in my hippocampus to say hello. Some have been dead for decades, but there they are, living, breathing, wearing funny hats in the strange world of the sleeping brain.

Sometimes, I dream of work. A plane has crashed and I’m on scene but can I put my hands on a pen or a single scrap of paper? Nossir, I cannot, and for what feels like hours, I run back and forth across the burning landscape, trying to figure out how to document the horror.

Sometimes I dream I can fly and they’re the kind of dreams that, when you wake from them, there is almost despair, because all at once, you are returned to your boring, pedestrian life on the ground.

But the raw excitement of a dream can never be described in the real world. It’s like trying to reheat prime rib, the flavor only a memory. And so there would be no dream column to get me through another week.

I have a file titled “Joie de Vivre,” which was to be about my growing cynicism and disgust with my fellow humans. But that was too heavy. Writing it felt like swimming with pockets full of rocks.

There’s another file titled “Turner,” and that was to be an observation that if one of Stephen King’s fictional towns ever made the transition into reality, it would be this place between Auburn and Livermore. To me, Turner is the ultimate small Maine town, where everybody knows everybody and the secrets are as twisted and intricate as the back roads to Greene.

Turner is Castle Rock, or maybe Derry. I’ve spent a lot of time there in recent years and I have plenty to support this declaration. But not this week. This week, my frame of mind is all wrong. I tried to write it down but the words came out ugly and useless, like rotten eggs at the Turner farms.

I tell you, it happens to everybody. When the words won’t come, you can either rip your keyboard off its leash and throw it at the wall, or just sigh and wait it out. If cats, dreams and the town of Turner can’t bust a guy out of his funk, nothing will. The little blue pills don’t work for this affliction and in fact, may cause more problems than they solve.

And with that, I fear I’ve said too much.

Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Dream cats from Turner like to email him at [email protected].