A Creative Soul.

My first words are lethargic, yet I know it is time. They have slowly birthed themselves, then are bursting out of me like an explosion.

Life is so loud that I can see the thickness and mass of the noise that surrounds me. I feel the sensation of the words. My soul is tired. An atrophied muscle. Sensation and muse have been absent. My ten fingers, slowly tapping out original thoughts are creaky and rusty like a derelict bicycle dragged out in the spring after several winters of inattention and lack of use. Distraction stretches and unfurls squeezing out my imagination.

We should teach children to prepare for an adulthood jammed full of clamoring urgency. Middle age will have paraphernalia that collects in the basement, garage, closets and corners of our consciousness until there are no decent ideas or inspiration, only excuses. Interruptions and noise.

When I was young I would not have believed that I would need to learn to be disciplined in order to challenge the “to-do” of family, work, and possessions. That I would need to carefully clear a room for quiet. As I do I am hopeful that the sparks of creativity will ignite.

Right now I cannot find

spare words.

Clatter invades even with my eyes closed. When I open them again life shrieks to be cleaned up, cared for, carefully ordered from disorder.

This noise competes for our creative soul. Clarity is somewhere the echoes of a silent room.

The empty pages have waited for me to trust myself with words again.

First words spill like heart ache.

I stare hard; curious and hungry, finally ignoring the noise. And for a moment I am filled with wonder.

I squeeze my eyes shut, salty with the sadness that has been pushing and pulsing to come bursting. Fury swells. I remember that I AM MADE FOR THIS! The anger comes because I have walked on for what seems an age. Walked without words.

At some point I left the path of imagination and curiosity which lost my interest. It is a path that requires trust and a willingness to face down the noise.

The energy of rage and the sadness is important in order to walk with words.

As if jumping on the dilapidated bicycle, I press my feet down on the two pedals slowly, beleaguered in the beginning, then faster and faster as the blood in my legs begins to pulse and flow. In my mind’s eye I feel the wind, my salty stinging tears flowing down the worn grooves of my face.

And I soar.

April 8, 2017