inspiration

when i lived up north, i got really, really inspired by a book.

nothing in the self help section; just a plain old fiction book. the heroine was just that kick ass. it inspired me to do things i never considered, but things that really did change my life--moving off on my own, being as independent as i needed to be.

it's something that comes and goes, this inspiration. i think about the way things work and how i never know exactly when it's going to strike. usually it arrives in the form of media--books, music, television, movies. and usually it inspires me for a while, and then flits off.

i was thinking about this the other day, mainly because i went to the website at which i used to arrive daily, and it was closed down. hadn't been there in a while; the heroine that so inspired me in northern climes has taken a different turn, and i don't find her books as vivid any longer. part of me was sad to see that site close, but part of me was relieved--i'm not missing anything, it's all gone. i never thought i would be getting so much stuff from a computer, or via a computer.

lately my inspiration has been slightly dried up. it reminds me of most natural things--drought, rain, blossoms, drought again. it's cyclical, it's nothing reliable, and it's certainly not predictable.

i used to think that people who wrote poems on napkins were strange. this was back when i started college. now i'm a napkin person too; in fact the other day it was while waiting for car financing to go through, and on the back of my privacy release document.

for a long time i made myself be creative, whenever i needed to be, for school. now it's not a requirement any longer, and it's falling into a state of disrepair, or maybe just back to its natural form, the cycles of the moon, the seasons, however it worked before i made it dance like a bear.

it frustrates me, this inaction. and yet i have a difficut time reaching over, or seeing past it, to the point at which it rains and i paint, or draw, or write, just plain old create. writing--poetry in particular--is like breathing: so much a part of me that i cannot imagine not expressing myself in this manner.

so what's my inspiration today? what's gotten me out of bed before the dark hour of nine am? my family's in town somewhere. my car is waiting to be driven. i figured out the antenna and now i have radio. such a novel idea. (;

it'll come to me when the snow starts to melt. i know that i need to relax and just let go of the anxiety, the feeling that i'm being blocked, because i'm not. i'm like the earth, the grass, the green growing spring life--dormant, waiting. something will arrive and i will move, stretch my inspired limbs and just do.