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.

Foggy Day. With damp

Stillness is an ever absurd event. There is paralysis in stillness, and also landscape and surface and the smell of peas.

Yes. Peas.

The library is closed until Tuesday, but nothing closes sidewalks or hides the outside walls of buildings and the walking is pleasant. It is only a few blocks to the river and the lighthouse and the pier and the freezing plant for peas.

The experience of 'getting focused' is one that does not always take a whole lot of energy, but does take time and patience. I miss the writing of the last few years where words happened in a rhythm that led itself into images and impossibilities and ridiculous metaphors that required nothing more of me than my hands and a few bits of technological magic to share with the world, or whatever part of the world happened to land here for a while before heading off on stumble to some other set of recipes or book reviews or art work. It will not happen again simply because I wish it, and there is no magic spell that will turn the heartbeat back into a poetic foundation for the larger thoughts of the larger world that find such outlet in the marketplace of my inner mind and have such difficulty finding their feet in the air. Even in the air of typing.

Outside was damp. Cool and quiet. The whole town is shutting down for the weekend. Not just one day, but the whole weekend. I am unaccustomed to such diligence and find it more aggravating than I need. Next weekend sees Sputnikfest, Lobsterfest and the 9/11 Remembrance ceremony. Perhaps the town, not unlike the people in it, finds stillness in focus the way to face the days ahead.

As for me, I read.
I will grab my quote-book and add to its pages.

And occasionally find myself here, checking to see what Molly Crabapple is doing during her week in hell.

Cloudy with drizzle and courage

I am wearing my bathrobe today. All day. Until I go to work. Or for a walk through the town to be braver about the weather than I am right now. Now I am safe and indoors with a lovely view of things from the distance of my father's desk.

My desk no longer offers such safety - it is covered with a letter half-created and three more to write today. I cannot say that they will be wonderful these letters, but I do not believe that they will suffer for it - rhythms are most often reached through repetition. It is the repetition's crash that I find difficult.

Any writer or artist will tell you this: the act of doing is indescribable. The act of having done is freefall and reaction. It sucks. The only way that I have ever found to keep some of that under control is to limit the amount of time I spend doing the words into some kind of order thing, or to limit the words, or to make certain that what is written is meaningless and disconnected. But these are all false and they do not work.

It is an act of bravery that will get me off my ass here and back on my ass in there, typewriter to hand, words in no pre-determined order put down on paper to be sent to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances. They are all of good humor. I hope.

I am reading The Geography of Strabo (in translation, of course) and am struck by something that is so terribly human and yet so terribly limiting. Strabo spends a good amount of time criticizing the words and works of others. There are various and valid reasons for this: to establish the correctness of the sources he uses; to define what are the limits of geography in terms of geometry, astronomy and physics; to define a vocabulary and expectation of word use; and to be kind of a jackass at people who he thinks are just wrong, and blind and make dangerous assumptions (cough cough).

At one point, he discusses a map that was drawn and became very popular and well read and he complains, rightly, that even though the map does not represent what is known of the known world at the time (even when it was drawn), and that many scholars and scientists recognized the problems with the map, it was not redrawn and the mistakes must be explained over and again because people used it, they believed it. It was written. If, as someone recently said to me, if we acknowledge that every writer is a product of time and place, then how much can I imagine it would take not only to publicize a map, to defend it and distribute it, but what would it take to do more than point and scoff at its mistakes. To make an argument of a conversation, to willingly engage with another person's intellect, ability and experience in order to alter a thing which has been made almost concrete; these are acts of confidence and openness that always astonish me.

It is one thing to blather on a will. I do that all the time. Even in my brain, when I'm not talking to anyone or writing anything, there is blather. Really. It doesn't ever actually stop. But rarely is it well-thought out and even more rarely am I prepared to brook dissent and argument. (Granted, most of the arguments that have been leveled at me are of a personal nature and do not much more than convince me that most people are not as willing to see things from different perspectives as I generally find desirable (really).(in other words, we don't hang out.))

Most of my relationships involve a certain degree of distance. Usually that distance is intellectual or emotional. Now that it is physical and not likely to become less as time goes on, but more, I find that there is a need for courage.

The sky glows light gray in front of the afternoon sun. I've boxes to move yet and letters to ponder. This evening I will take a long way to work.

Walking home

It is curious to me that as I've gotten older, people have become more and more concerned with how much I walk and when and more and more apt to offer me rides, even when I can see no reason for it.

As a child, I walked home from school almost every day. I know: uphill both ways in snow with no shoes and 100 pounds of books. While there was a slight rise leaving the school, I fully admit that it was downhill the whole way, I mostly forgot my books and my parents were very vigilant about my footwear. Although I was not always good about wearing long pants or tights. It was about a mile and a half, and since I walked at the pace of a stoned snail stuck in molasses, it took about an hour every day.

And No One Protested. No One. No one said "Call me when you get there." No one gave me that raised eyebrow look of despair at my act of self-transportation. No One.

When I was 17 and lived in Great Barrington and worked at the pizza joint, I walked about 3/4 of a mile to and from work. Going to work was nice, coming home was terrifying. There were no street lights, the road was almost always completely deserted and there was a cemetery that I had to pass. Also, it was winter in the Berkshires, I was miserable and cold and jumpy for the entire 7 months I lived there. It was so dark. I had never known that kind of dark in a residential area in my life. Ever. I learned a lot about being aware of my surroundings there. How to judge the distance from one house to another; how to know where my feet would fall on sidewalk or street no matter how much snow, things that I'd never processed before, but had known from experience.

In Wichita in my early 20's, I walked. And again, while occasionally friends would loan me their cars, parking was a pain in the ass and I was terrible about filling the gas tank. I preferred to walk. Everywhere. And No One required me to justify it. Or make the I got home safely call. I never got the half-eyebrow.

I write a lot about walking. It is my rhythm, it is how I see the world, it is my preferred method of transportation. I dream of walking tours and vacations that are pilgrimages and Hadrian's Wall and boots and light packs and no cameras and notebooks, because that's how I love the world the best. On the ground. Between my feet and their motion, in the sounds of the street level debris and the relative non-existence of passers-by.

So, I am here now, closer to 40 than my folks want to admit. In this very small town. I got a part-time job. I walk to it. It's about 8 blocks. Not 8 Chicago blocks, mind, these are short. And EveryOne is Concerned. Ev-e-Ry-One. All Of Them. Even the People Who Raised Me.

The walk is nice and sort of surreal. I cross the town square, go to the other side of town, if you will. There are street lights every four feet and wide sidewalks with easy to see cracks and gullys for safer navigation. I can stare in the empty storefronts and add something a little bit odd, a little bit not quite right to this deeply sensible little village. The stoplights tell me when to go and when to not go. I ignore them.

It is not over-confidence, it is simply that I will not have my life circumscribed based on someone else's ideas of propriety and routine. Safety is a thing that gets in my way more than it allows me live freely. High heels do not exist in my wardrobe. I know how to carry my keys for maximum blood-letting and also, I talk to myself at moments, just to maintain distance between me and, oh, everyone else.

Being a pedestrian is no longer about just getting somewhere unnoticed. I am aware of everything that goes on around me, from insects to pennies on the ground to just how many things besides driving the person at the green light is doing. I see the town, the city, the trees, the view.

I get home safely.

On the outside

The day is brilliant and clear and I carry with me many books filled with information and advice and science and poetry and it is good.

The difficulty with unemployment (for now the only one) is mostly one of filling up my time in meaningful and positive ways. I am very focused on that combination of requirements of late. Not sure where they came from, but they are specific and I approve. I've accomplished nearly all of my goals for the day. There is one more bit of financial responsibility that I need to commit and then I will go and find another book and head home in the sunshine and happy to the land of face-buried felines and a new yoga routine. It is unnerving to think of starting new moves and different breathing and I think I'll do just fine.

I have not practiced for two days. It is not okay.

I remember only bits from one dream of last night and it was jarring. There were threads. Actual threads, one white, one orange (saffron?). I woke and struggled with something that has become a non-entity of late: despair. It is hardly unnatural or never to be expected, especially as so much changes between last week and the middle of August, and next fall and spring and the August that follows and every semester again and there really is no end to the movements of living. My heart has been very still of late, settling down past floodwater lines that I've never noticed before and telling me stories that have never had a voice. So to experience the fringes of pointless sadness was something not to be ignored, though also not to be embraced.

In my half-sleep the notion that this life is no longer on a conveyor belt, that the path it follows is walked and strolled and jogged and still and not inevitable or doomed, found words and they pleased me. I am not all for ego-strong free will, and I am not not not about to give it up to predestination. Life happens. And we/I decide what to do about it. It's very much a balance, a conversation, where pride and bravado and violence can seem to have more strength than sweetness and silence and the gentleness of a held hand.

In my vain attempts to prevent noticing the 'waiting' I have lectures to hear, books to read and projects to finish or start knitting and beading and crocheting and gluing and cleaning. I have about a week before anything exciting really happens again.

It is good to find my way here.

Tracks in the snow

The knitting projects for the year have begun, in grand fashion. This is not to say that there is anything grand or glorious about collecting needles and yarn and pattern and focus, rather that both of the projects I will begin soon are huge and will take many months to complete. The patterns are entirely new to me, and I've decided to be smart about them (as the finished projects are gifts for other people) and make actual swatches, to scale replicas, if you will, not only for practice and note-taking purposes, but also to have some remnant of the things in my home.

Not every project must be large and impossible. There is a need for fingerless gloves and perhaps even socks. A pattern has been chosen for the cabling that I would like to use on both of them. I find the idea matching gloves with socks deeply silly and wonder where the hell it came from. I feel that thick wool boot socks and matching gloves in various shades of orange and purple and green will be a lovely addition to my winter wardrobe. One of these years.

The small projects; the ones that take an hour or two; the ones that take an hour or two every day for a week - these are the ones that keep me focused on the larger ones. I learn more about consistency. I have something to do. Results are not necessarily immediate, but they are noticeable. and I've got stuff to show off to people. Which is always the goal, na?

I've broken the big projects down as much as I can. The house, the afghan, the couch runner thing, the novel. The novel is the one that has the most little steps. I've got an idea board for it. I've got ideas. The time is a little more haphazard right now as there is much going on. That will get worked out. Because it is a nice little project to sit with the calendar and my work schedule and move around each other for a little while.

Last night I began the replica of the couch runner thing. I've altered the pattern slightly to accommodate the yarn and needles that I've to use. This will be the first project involving more than one color that I've done in a very long time, and I'm more than a bit nervous, so the color change practice is good. It is good to just jump into a thing, knowing that there are more jumps ahead, never fear about the lack of challenge.

Also - oh, yeah, there's an also - the reading. I love the reading. but there's a hell of a lot of it to do this lifetime. The library that I leave to the world will be my gift to the next me. This is my reading list. What is yours?

The world here is cold, so cold that we all wish to be fitted inside with blankets and warm drinks. Our wishes go unfulfilled and the outdoors calls with sunshine and snow and we walk around in a daze, not quite believing where we are. These are days of coffee shops and long lunches and plans for winter adventures in snow-covered cemeteries in boots and gloves and many long layers under something lovely in flowing skirt. There is quiet in the walking, even the crunch does not always travel as far as it could. We will speak of fairies and families and perfect picnics as we take pulls from flasks of liquid warm and spicy. Our feet will freeze and our noses will turn us all into shunned reindeer and when we go home and finally sleep the dreams will dance in delight because their world has been given beauty and cold and spice.