I sit here staring at the blank text box seeking my own inspiration for this endeavor. For my own part, I am a relic. Archaic, even. Trusting to paper and pen rather than the digital world to convey my thoughts. I've even questioned the value of the "blogosphere," as I have been told it is called, but for my friends, I will give it a try.
Inspiration is...oh hell, I intended to write some erudite diatribe on the nature of inspiration as I view it, but that's crap. If you are here and you're reading all this, then you've already experienced it. That cliched light bulb has burgeoned in your mind and the story is forming. In my own experience, these visitations from the muses come at the worst possible times. The shower, for instance, when there is no possible way of my being able to write the idea down. Do it afterwards, you say and for anyone else this might work. However, I have the memory of a goldfish. I can hardly remember whether or not I've done my hair, let alone remember something for more than five minutes. Church is another of those times. When I'm meant to be listening to the vicar as he/she drones on about some letter or other from Peter or Paul to some long dead civilization (Ephesians or some such), that is when my mind wanders to my stories. I've been jabbed in the ribs more than once while desperately trying to scribble out my thoughts on the back of a stack of offering envelopes. And I must say, the use of those stubby little pencils is an art in and of itself.
The best example I can give of what gets the gears turning in the miasma of my mind is to relate something I read yesterday. It was a meme (yes, I have learned a few things along the way) about having a physicist deliver your eulogy. After a few paragraphs extolling the standard paradigms of Newton's First Law (e.g. - that all that you are will simply be recycled back into the universe) I read one line that caused the body of my thoughts to start into motion. I am paraphrasing, but essentially it said: "Every beam of light that ever struck your face and every quantum particle that was reflected by your smile was gathered indelibly onto the eyes of those around you forming permanent memories of you in their minds. Thus, some part of you will live on in every person you've ever encountered." There is a story in that and all I have to do is find it.
I've prattled long enough.
mtm
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ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how many times I've used the offering envelopes, too. And what do you do with these notes? I end up sticking them in a drawer, convinced that if I write it down I won't forget it. I don't know that is true, but that is what I believe.
ReplyDeleteEvery so often, I come across a small stack of the offering envelops and bulletins that have stuffed in a drawer somewhere, and I don't quite know what to do with them. They have microscopic scribblings of strange ramblings.
You want any?