Inspired and uninspired and yet, inspired again.
I return to this story as one who walked away from his creative self but was always destined to return to his creative self, and perhaps that was for the best, and the one and only way it was always meant to be.
And while in the time my soul was off skinny dipping in the silence, I did not find any banners to fly from the heavens, no sweet words to speak, no beloved one to say: “Now we shall fly new banners from this castle, and the messages they convey will be writ of your own choosing. But to touch my heart, you kind sir, must first open yours back up for me to touch.”
None of that old-fashioned chivalrous romantic Renaissance shit for me these days.
This typewriter of mine though has a mind of its own as it spins against every last finger. The words spinning from it faster than a comet that’s just escaped the ether of two colliding stars, like some cosmic horse galloping spirally through the silence upon the outskirts of a dream.
Outside, the sun is trying to shine.
The smoke so thick that even sunlight has to plunge through the denseness of an unfathomable darkness just to show itself as daytime.
Perhaps maybe, the message of the unforced words that spin from this typewriter again with that of a newborn idea will fight their way through one of the darkest nights of my soul if only to become but a mere reincarnation of another brand new sunny and inspiring day.
Who can really say?
It is the seventeenth day of September, twenty twenty two. I turned forty-five ten days ago.
Out back, bathing in a ray of smoky sunshine on the freshly laid cobblestone a bluebird tweets a song with a slew of silent others somewhere just to the west of here, while a wise old owl hoots surreptitiously in the creative void between my ears.
Over the years since I began writing again—the two of them, with me—we almost became a sort of harmonious aviary.
Those were the blissful days of anonymity, weren't they?
I'd suppose that I still sometimes try my damndest to sing and tweet and hoot with them here and there. But my artistically charged ego doesn't always succeed when trying to sing in tune with that of their naturally consistent and rhythmic harmony.
Inspired and uninspired and yet, inspired again.
I make my way back through the smoke filled darkness of self-doubt.
Hopes & Dreams
It’s rather something to have hope place a feathery pillow politely under your sleepy little head just before bed, only to have it pulled right out from under you while fast asleep silently with your dreams.
“I'm here to let you know what to do if and when that happens again,” said my reclusive writer friend, who surprisingly knocked on my door from out of nowhere just the other day. “And only because you’re a pretty important character in the story that I’ve yet to even begin to come close to finishing.”
Those words he spoke though you see, well, they kind of sort of really set my hopes and dreams up on pedestal built out of my own feathery pillow of pride when he gently placed such a convincing sentence in front of me.
I was welcomed with an immediate vision of vain when I imagined myself as a sort of poetically comedic and romantic lead. And hell, to be honest, just to even be the vaguely loved misunderstood villain would’ve been more than suffice enough to appease my feathery dreams.
But because of this vision of vain, I had to somewhat humbly remind myself of something as it pertains to a story. That reminder is as follows.
Is it true that the reality of our stories, apart from actually happening to us—or even being created from the great beyond within our wildest dreams—might they truly have an inspiring message to convey?
I 100% still believe so.
Because in the pushing back of my own revolving door of doubt some hint of overbearing and irrational superstition has managed to withstand me and all of my well thought out skepticism.
And I have no choice but to chalk it all up to the old-fashioned conviction that everything in my life that has happened to me also carries with it, it’s own mythical sense, that it all has to secretly mean something, that it all had to happen for a goddamn good reason. Because I believe that each individual instance of pain or joy that we experience in this life means to silently weave us through the narrative of our ongoing story.
Maybe it’s something along the lines that the stories we tell are mystified by the mythology of our lives, and within said stories and the messages they convey to humanity hides the mystery and the truth to the meaning of our existence here, and in the now.
See to me, a myth is something that actually never happened, all the same though, they are pretty much always happening within us. Myths are nothing more than the mysterious plots of our souls.
I believe that myths come from the same exact place that dreams come from. But it's only because they’re so much more coherent with an ongoing narrative than our dreams are actually capable of creating. And the fact that they are more linear and delicately refined makes them much more instructive because of their constructiveness.
Myths are the love songs of the universe, songs that when sung in consistent harmony and are acutely perceived by the listener, will offer an explanation of the universe and our often illusory and confusing place in it.
Now, is all the pain and joy we experience in this life just a sort of trivial myth, a mere illusion?
Possibly.
Though even more likely than that, probably.
And I myself—being the half-assed creative that I am—cannot rid my very own stubborn soul of the need to try and continue to examine with creativeness the myth behind the meaning of my very own painfully joyful existence. Because hopefully, behind all of the illusions of fleeting happiness and sorrowful suffering I might finally figure out the what of what it is that I do not know yet.
“Now we are finally getting somewhere,” spoke my writer friend, interrupting my thought process altogether.
“So what exactly is it that I do in this story you speak of?” I asked him, while listening within a creative void waiting with the most patient of ears hoping to hear about all sorts of great, soul-igniting, mentally-rearranging, spiritually-revolutionizing, and yet to be experienced things.
“You open a door,” he said in a simpleton tone.
“What? Really? That’s it? Surely there has to be something else not so simple as that that I could have done?”
“I’m afraid that’s about it my old friend.”
“Well shit,” I sighed with slight regret below my breath. My hope and dreams damn near diminished. The feathery pillow ripped right out from underneath my own arrogant aspirations and unabashedly built pride.
"Couldn’t I have done anything else at all? At the very least, couldn't I've creatively established eternal tenure within my own little cozy poetic corner somewhere in this here mean old world? Or maybe go so far as even help to reunite the United States by reigniting a little spark for the looming revolution of…whatchamacallit? Or quite possibly even open back up the door and windows to her grace's heart and soul, if only to let the crisp autumn air of undeniable hope back in? Is not there anything else that I could I have done? Really? I opened a door and that's it?"
“The door you opened was just enough sir,” he smiled. “You were 100% perfect.”
“Well did I at least say anything when I opened the door?” I asked, standing in front of a door.
“Nope. Not yet.”
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