Skip to main content

Fondling my muse~


The only fondling I do these days, if you don't count the cat, is in my fantasies. Nice as that is, I'm lucky that my muse fondles me. Sometimes he gently wakes me in the night, with a thought or a fading dream, but usually he awakens me early in the morning with a muselike kiss, an idea which is too good to risk losing by falling back to sleep.

I always listen to him. If I'm too tired, or if I've neglected to leave a notebook and pen beside the bed, I repeat the thought to myself until I fall back to sleep. This is no guarantee I will remember it when I'm ready to get up. Sometimes I drag myself out of bed to my desk, and scratch out the words in the dark, hoping I'm on a blank page; sometimes in the light of day, I see I've written over another entry.

Because I've come to expect my muse to visit, and I've come to trust him, I have notebooks full of his nudges-- observations, images, questions, leads to a story I'm working on-- just waiting for me to use them. Good stuff. Inspiration. Thoughts culled from the swirl of my subconsious undercurrent by my insistent muse.

Now it's a matter of time. I owe it to my muse to put his offerings to use, lest he back off, offended that I'm letting his ideas lie fallow. Something always intervenes, and grabs my time and attention. So far my muse is patient. But I'm not.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...

Killing time~

I'd woken feeling stuffy headed, slightly allergy-ish, puffy-eyed, and a tad grumpy. Lots to do, little time in which to do it, school issues keeping me in a state of angst, I considered not going to David's game. But it was Saturday, the game fairly close to home-- Salem State College-- an hour or so north through Boston to the town of Salem, famous for the 1692 witch trials that saw 19 suspected witches, many of them social outcasts, hang on Gallows Hill. A change of pace was what I needed whether I wanted it or not, so I went. I squeezed in a walk around the block that enclosed Salem State's O'Keefe Center while waiting for the game to begin. Just to kill time. I get so few chances to do that. Others walking, too, passed with no eye contact, no greetings, just sharing the same planet. Two were coming toward me. Still unfocused in the distance . . . one was tall, the other short . . . two men . . . loose clothing . . . like army clothes, camouflage . . . beard and lon...

Missing Becky~

Becky~ August 19, 1991 to April 26, 2010 She was so loved, this gentle pet of mine.  And how she loved us back. I've been alone in my house before, of course. Those days when my husband took the kids out for the day, being able to vacuum without a baby in one arm and a toddler, riding the vacuum cleaner like it was a bronco, was solitary pleasure. Later there were quiet days as the kids were at camp and my husband at work. And then came the bittersweet aloneness when kids left home for college and a life apart. Still, I'd always liked being alone, knowing it was short lived. This morning, after my husband pulled out of the driveway with a day full of plans,  I stood in the living room feeling alone in a way I never had before.  An unfamiliar emptiness and silence surrounded me. Yesterday we put our 18-year-old cat, Becky, to sleep. The decision to do so was surprisingly easy. The vet had told us Becky would let us know when it was time, and somehow she did. But ...