Inspiration is a bitch.

Here’s the thing about Inspiration: it’s a fickle bitch and you’re best off not waiting around for it to show up. You have to ask it over, know that it will say yes and then not show up. You have to make dinner anyway and wash the dishes later. You have to smile when you see it at the park and make small talk. You have to behave like nothing ever went between you before every single time you meet face to face. You have to live your life with your eyes averted to their own purpose, never once lifting them to be in the service of something as fickle as that bitch Inspiration.

Every day I sweep the floor of my apartment. Because I live with cats, cats who use a litter box, litter which gets stuck in the fur of their paws (because that’s a pretty standard cat-feature) which then falls out all over the floor. Which is a sort of wood tile thing. And some of the tiles are loose, so it sometimes sounds like you’re walking over cellophane, only you know you can’t be because the floor is wood. Very – um – character filled. And not a little nerve-wracking.

In order to sweep the floor every day, I pick up and put into a box most of the toys that are scattered for the cats to entertain themselves. Ethel is fabulous at this. Boris is a grumpy gorging doofus face who is too good to play with anything in this apartment. He feels things deeply, was in no way consulted about this change of geography, is away from his BFF and his other favorite human and will spend the next few days up to a week being a grumpy gorging doofus face steeped in cat-apathy.

(Oh! Saw a funny: graffiti of “Anarchy” on a posted bill followed by “is fucking boring” and I smiled and wanted a camera.)

One of the toys is an ill-conceived ball made of hard plastic in two pieces that have been joined to each other along a ridge, not unlike an Easter Egg only with the seam protruding and glued shut to prevent all access to the bits inside that make a fun noise whenever the thing rolls around. On the wood floor. In an apartment with cement walls. I feel like this may be part of the reason that the Pharaohs were as special as they were. Damn cat toys.

Yesterday I picked up the hard plastic toy of headache from inside the box where it was used to great noise effect and I put in on a shelf with my Trilogy Tuesday ticket and my matchbook that says “I am fairly certain that given a cape and a nice tiara, I could save the world” (thank you, Danielle!). Ethel loves this toy. Ethel is just joyous in this place and will play with anything, and that includes the ball from hell.

And here’s where the Inspiration thing comes back in. It’s a crap cat toy. She knows this. She’s got this nerf type ball that she’s been carrying around in her mouth for three days that is way more interesting and fun to chase around. It’s quiet, like she is, and it sort of bounces off of things, and she can get her teeth into it. Hard plastic with noisy bits on the inside = not nearly as much fun. But, and here’s the kicker, she can’t get it off the shelf. She stares at it, bats at it, gets to roll around a bit and yet it will not make the 5 inch trip off the edge to the ground where it could then rule a miserable world until I finally just throw the thing away. (This is my trying to not exert my “I’m human and have opposable thumbs, so you’re just going to have to deal with it”-ness. I have authority issues. It’s a thing.) It teases her, without even meaning to. But she can’t have it. No matter what she does, it will not roll off the edge. And yet, she keeps trying to get its attention.

That’s how you have to be with Inspiration. Stay on the shelf with Lord of the Rings and kitschy happiness. Roll around and make your noise and don’t take the batting seriously. And you will be the most popular train of thought track in the creative atmosphere. Live your life and write your words and paint your pictures and do not be a bitch to that fickle bitch Inspiration.

I walked a lot today. Cherokee Street. At one end is Hammond’s Books, used books and antiques and a coupla cups of coffee and it’s been around for more than 30 years. 2 floors with 80,000 titles and a searchable website and a delightful owner. We chatted for close to 20 minutes and I told her what I want to do and to be and she smiled and understood and did not even blink about the quest to learn to preserve comic books (don’t get me started with that ‘but they were meant to be ephemera’ shit). It is the sort of place that invites careful consideration and is very like a way station from personal library to personal library – that kind of limbo of understanding where books have many levels of meaning and value and they are all accorded space in this place. But it is also the sort of place that does not invite too much pondering, or scanning and reading. It is known to itself. And you must take its opinion at face value. It has been around longer than most.

A mile to the West is the Archive book store. Used books and no coffee that I could see. Local arts from local artists. Easily read book shelves. They’ve been open for a year and a half and are not feeling the stability of good support as yet. Not floundering, I think, but treading water to shore. I chatted with the woman who owns that shop for a good 20 minutes also. I enjoy the place and plan to return to sit and read and maybe someday buy a thing or five and then saunter home past the houses with carved bricks and rounded sides. As we spoke, she told me of Spiderwick and the story of the man who finds the world of gnomes and fairies and goes into it, leaving his daughter to grow up without him. He leaves also a book that says on it “Do not unseal” and eventually, as eventually it must happen, a child does just that.

Standing in the bookstore with sweat like waves and my water bottle too far to grab, talking of movies and stories and growing older and the shift that hits at 40, I suddenly was throwing words around a casket made of the roots of a tree that lives only in my imagination and on a very few pieces of paper. Spells and fairy tales and what it is to believe that there has to be something in someone sometime that will be curious or defiant enough to open the thing that has been closed, to move the thing that has been set, to follow the clues that were not left; without all of these there is no hope for the next chapter in any story. The magic needs a volunteer. I could almost not see through the image.

However, I was in the middle of a conversation, and in no mood for its interruption. I acknowledged Inspiration and continued my conversation and then the walk home and dinner of cardamom in rice and veggies and a hard boiled egg and still, I am not alone. Inspiration has tugged on my wrists and on my eyes and has things to say.