I scribbled the following on a scrap of notebook paper during my senior year of college. It was a stage of life when everything was simultaneously new and old: A brand new marriage with eternity in its sights; A looming graduation date with old friends fluttering away like leaves; A pulsating awareness of my own possibility shrouded in self-doubt, busyness, writer’s block. I wrote down my confusion, impulsively, and it instantly became a friend as paragraphs sometimes do. We sit down to tea together some days, this paragraph and I, and it says, “Honey. Your life is far from over. See?”
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12/1/03
There’s a baby chicken inside my head, chipping at my skull. Or an orc, yawning in rage at the membrane that just… won’t… break. One day, my little galaxy will fling a meteor explosion until shards of ideas pierce my sight and the world is a masterpiece waiting to be savored. But not yet. Maybe my head will explode anyway, due to the war inside… but then it will be clumsy and black, dripping a mess of my brilliant possibility on my blank, blank paper. And for now, I’m dull and conflicted, misunderstood by my best intentions, focused on things bland and sawdusty to glean inspiration–a legend, I am convinced. I have never noticed my muse until the work was done.
ever so true and beautifully consummated on the page… it is so easy.. until it cannot be done…
So many of your posts about things you wrote about years ago make me wish I had kept a journal when I was younger. What fodder I would have now!
hmm.
“I have never noticed my muse until the work was done.” Brilliant. It completely captures everything I have ever felt about my creativity. I am quoting you on this in my journal now. Thanks for the inspiration 🙂 xoxo
I won’t ever get over how much I enjoy what you write. I can’t even think like that and you put it down so beautifully.
Haven’t been around much, but my computer is dead and I haven’t been checking up on blogs as much since I use my roommate’s computer for internet access. What say you to emails?
Paisley – I like how you put that. I think a lot of things are “so easy” until we can’t do them. 🙂
Lizardek – When did you start writing? Even if you didn’t journal when you were younger, you write now like you’ve been perfecting the art for years!
Jesse – Hmm.
Frankie – I feel like a celebrity now. 🙂
Samantha – Um, I can’t think like this either. I was telling Dan yesterday about a psychology case study of a woman with only half a brain who understood everything but was unable to say what she thought… and he asked, “Isn’t that exactly how you are?” Gulp, yes. I am basically a half-brained woman who can only figure out what she thinks by writing it down. Anyway, I say yes to e-mails. Definitely yes.