Shadow Play

I talk a lot in these messages about the natural environment, flowers and trees, birds and squirrels, snakes and hawks, light and shadow and color. Generally, they provide my inspiration. They anchor me.

When I started this message, I had a different exercise in mind. Books on writing dialogue recommend exercises in eavesdropping to get a feel for how people actually talk to one another. The point is not to capture the exact manner in which people converse, it's more to get an impression of it, then distill it down to its crucial elements, boiling away all the ers and uhms, the pauses and non-productive tangents to capture the essence of the exchange.

When I sat down to write this, I had a particular theme in mind: watching the people outside my window and what I could learn from the few seconds they are within my sight each day. My notes included things like who had become pregnant, who had hired a nanny, who had gotten a new dog. A husband and wife walking together but separate, her several feet behind as though they shared a completely separate world. Who had started on an exercise routine, who was trying out for cross-country. Who was gleaning extra money by picking through their neighbors' recycling.

The first rule of inspiration is that it's capricious. The muse changes direction without warning or explanation, like a butterfly on the wing. At first I felt resistance, though I couldn't figure out why. Resistance turned to judgment, the idea that the original concept had never been worthwhile and never would be, not matter how long I struggled with it. It is easy to tip from there into melancholy, doubting everything from my talent to my purpose, my direction and my voice. Those are the inglorious moments that few people witness. The joys of being a writer.

I set the message down to salvage another message, another errant child who didn't want to be led down the path where I thought it should go. If anyone is looking for an insight into writing, into creative endeavors of any kind, it is that sometimes you have to force your way through the resistance no matter how wrong it feels. Not your original idea. If you get too rooted in that you will get frustrated and give up. You have to travel where the river takes you, not swim against the current, and trust that you will end up at a pleasant destination. So I sat back down with this message and kept typing, just to see where the stream of thoughts would lead.

People tend to see nature as something different from their everyday surroundings. I'm not sure a bright line exists between natural and man-made environments. Where does my yard end and nature begin? Do the snakes notice the lines of demarcation, or do they just circumvent them like so many thickets and brambles and fallen logs? Do the squirrels notice any difference between the acorns in the oaks on either side of the ditch? Do coyotes discern between a cat on the prowl in the park and in my yard? Does a fox care where it finds a rabbit? Does a hawk think of our chainlink fence as anything more than a cool and slippery perch?

We like to think we control the environment around us, but we don't. Sure we clear land, build houses, transplant non-native species, exterminate pests. Everything we do has an impact. At the same time, other species, pigeons and cats, squirrels, roaches and rats, are at least as adaptable as we are. While we push some creatures to the verge of extinction, others flourish in the margins we've created and thrive on the detritus we leave behind. I'm not saying our impact is value-neutral. Nor do I see it as an anthropocentric manifest destiny. As long as we see ourselves as separate from our environment, we will continue to cause unintended consequences as we alter the complex systems upon which our lives depend. As long as we see ourselves as separate, we are benign dictators, Marie Antoinettes trapped within our Versailles gardens while the countryside erupts and the flames entertain us by casting shadows on our walls.

That was the beginning of my tangent as I sat back down to write. I wasn't sure where it was going or what it had to do with watching people, so I set it down again, waiting for another inspiration, some combination of man and nature to draw it all together.

On Saturday morning, our neighbor had a yard sale. She had one last weekend but didn't get the numbers she'd hoped for so she advertised and tried again. This week the turnout was brisk. Cars came and went, parking on both sides of the street, often across our driveway. But there was not so much traffic as to scare the blue jays off the birdfeeder out front. While we ate breakfast, Mara, our youngest cat, sat in the front window watching them. A car parked beyond our mailbox and a couple got out to see what treasures might lay hidden amongst the castoffs scattered across our neighbor's drive.

For an instant, those elements of man and nature came together. The sun, just high enough to reflect off the curve of the car's windshield but low enough to sneak beneath the trees, passed through the low, bare myrtle branches, then through front window and past the cat to paint a perfect silhouette in shadow on our living room wall. Something about the balance of images caught me, the crosshatch of muntins defining the window broken by the sweeping curves of branches, the shadow cat below with ears erect balanced by the squares of light above, all overlaid onto the everyday items that occupy our painted wall. I pointed it out to Karen who, in her own creative moment, captured the portrait with her camera. A moment later the couple returned from their outing and drove away. The scene before us faded.

Some days, I only get a glimpse of an inspiration, cobbled together from the elements at hand. Like a signpost on a switchback path, the way is only visible for a moment before it darkens and is gone. Like the sunlight dancing across the wall of Plato's cave, that shadow play made it difficult to tell where nature ends and man begins, which was real and which an illusion. Or whether the combination of both had created something else completely.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Three Muses

I share my days with three muses, capricious as cats, who sometimes focus my attention.

First, there is Samara, the youngest. Like any good muse, she responds to many names, depending on her mood. Mar-za-pan, Mar-zilla, Mara-licious. I think we'll call her mini-Mara.

She trills and bobs her head when I hold her gaze. She walks to me to see me after tumbling out of a bag of yarn. Or lies with all four feet in the air, belly exposed, prnt'ing and barely cracking an eye when I poke her. She is always happy to see me, though like a shy faerie, she hides herself from strangers. Some days she runs just to be alive.

Most mornings, she is the one who wakes me to share a vision she can't contain. The fire light of dawn, the molten copper of morning, faeries in the grass, fog like snow upon the lawn were all her gifts. She doesn't care that I have a headache, she needs to inspire. To her, the world is a fresh, new toy to play with and to share.

Then there's the elder statesman, Smoke, the dark prince, the demon, the sorcerer and enchanter. The oldest, if diminutive, lion of this pride, he roars for his dinner in the evening. He remains curious between long, contemplative naps, the friendly one, the one who casts a spell charming everyone he meets. Mournful for the many friends he's lost, he cries at the back door for their return, or calls that he will soon join them.

His is a domain of pure imagination. He weaves the spells of intrigue and mystery that sometimes infuse my brain. I think his visions are dreams from his mornings in the sun. Though slowing with age, he is perhaps my oldest, dearest friend.

Finally, there is the middle child, Pristina, the Tina-fish, the Tina-nator, Ms. Jealousy. She was much like Mara when she was younger, a self-contained brat-pack of one. Now, she has become more staid, though still a wildling. On cool mornings, she finds any scrap of sunshine to settle in. She curls up with an attitude, claiming her position as a territory, daring me to take it away.

With her I must be still and very quiet before she deigns to join me. Touching her is sometimes encouraged, sometimes off-limits. She has become solitary, yet ever-present. In the deepest parts of night, she stares at me until I awake, then her eyes consume my soul.

This morning, she jumped into my lap and granted me a gift I had never seen before. Achingly beautiful but impossible to describe, there are lone amber hairs set against the pewter fur on the back of her neck. They glow in the light slanting through the window, sharp and reflective, like fiber-optic strands phosphorescing in the morning sun. Individual hairs like spun bronze threads set against a gray velvet coat, like the imperfections in a tapestry that makes a perfect whole. It took nearly nine years for her to find the perfect light to reveal her secret to me, beauty well worth the wait.

Some days, these muses provide me a vision of inspiration. Some days, they are the only inspiration I have.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Faeries

Thoughts flit in and out of my subconscious like faeries on the wing. Some are shy and flirtatious, concealing themselves in the thinnest gossamer spun from spider's silk. Others are more playful, sparkling as their jewelry flashes in the sun.

Gregarious by nature, one attracts another until dozens vie for my attention. Some days, they draw up sides to wage an impromptu battle of conflicting ideas, delighting as their miniature swords prick my imagination. Other days they go into seclusion, refusing to reveal themselves for some perceived slight. Then without warning, they streak across the periphery, making me hunt them in an elaborate game of hide and seek. Most days, they converse in tones just beyond my comprehension like the babble of distant water imitating voices.

They love to try on different colors just to see which camouflages them the best. They cloak themselves in the deep blues of a winter sky and in the hazy whites of summer, in the yellow-greens of spring returned and in the myriad flames of fall. They peek out from the gray and dun fur of a chattering squirrel, from the iridescent indigo feathers of a watchful crow, from the charcoal and pearl clouds of approaching rain. Anything that catches my eye or sparks my imagination.

They are drawn to the quiet of the morning and the solitude of night. Deep stillness makes them curious. As I doze in the autumn sun, they light upon my face, tickling my nose with the slippered cat's whiskers of their feet, fanning my cheeks like newly emerged butterflies drying their wings. Through half-shaded eyes I can sometimes see them flitting back and forth like hummingbirds scenting nectar. Should my eyes burst open, they startle and take flight.

On good days the faeries dance before my eyes like dappled sunlight through the maples, whispering gold into my ears in tiny chimes of laughter on the wind. On the best days, I dance with them. I find the motion soothes me.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

The Voice

Some days people ask where I get my ideas, how I transcribe what I see into words hopefully filled with beauty or with meaning. Like most writers, I rely upon a muse, an invisible ingenue whose voice whispers seductively within my ear. Some writers describe their muse as shy or flirtatious or capricious. Mine is bi-polar.

On the worst of days she emerges with stress, announcing herself by pounding inside my head as if struggling to be free. She is forced to share the cloister of her confinement with a pair of cellmates, harpies to her faerie. They screech and shriek and wail incessantly, drowning out her dulcet tones with their shrill complaints. Like an evil stepmother and stepsister, they find fault with everything she does. They ridicule her for her differences, her thoughts, her imperfections, her ephemeral wings, the color of her hair. They bite and claw at her, buffeting her with their raven wings. Too often she gives credit their expectations of perfection and the criticisms which scar her. She succumbs to the anger, the frustration, the apathy, the angst, not realizing all these wounds are self-inflicted.

On days when her dissonant rivals fall into a catatonic slumber after one of their exhaustive tauntings, she is transformed into all the things a muse should be. She rises like an island from my subconscious, an ancient goddess, a nymph, a dryad. A golden green willow whose supple, slender branches droop just above the glass ceiling of our world. As her leaves brush the invisible barrier that separates us, the surface ripples with distortions. Sparkling pinpoints flow outward and diffuse. Her trunk is the center of creation. Few scale the heights into which her feet are nestled or climb up onto her damp knees. Or ascend even farther into her graceful, sheltering limbs. Most only see evidence of her existence in the distortions of the night sky they are at a loss to explain. Few know she is firmly rooted in our world, drawing sustenance from our existence, feeding upon our day to day, transforming the energy of our lives into fuel for the leaves which drip and flick the sky with the magic of inspiration deep within the night, sending the stars rippling outward. In the cycle of her life inspiration begets creation which feeds action breeding further inspiration, an alternating pattern like the light and narrow rings within her tree.

She tickles my thoughts as the celestial breeze stirs her leaves across the dark surface of my mind. Her slender fingers play upon the water as if trailing behind a rowboat drifting with the current on a lazy, summer's day. She doses, distracted by the hypnotic patterns she creates while I rush to capture them with only quickly jotted notes and an imperfect, fading memory.

Until the harpies roosting in her crown awake in their eyries from discontented dreams, screaming.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III