Finding Inspiration

Today I felt particularly bored and lifeless. The clock’s alarm set off at 6:45 AM. My body’s tocsin didn’t discharge for another half hour, until finally the bladder dictated so, and up languorously I ultimately got. The stale act of getting ready for the day begun - and concluded - and off I was. And because I was too slow to start my day, I was running late, hence I drove past Starbucks. Shit.

Less than an hour after arriving the workplace, I was already overcome by that sluggish, tiring certainty that would surely last a whole day, if not, an eternity. I need an excuse to get out of here, was my basal thought. Ahh… an errand!

“Kari, that karaoke machine is over at the other facility, and I made arrangements to collect that this morning,” was the fitted excuse.

Zoom my car and I went! Double-tall-soy latte here I come!!!

Sitting outside the apropos (coffee) shop, I languidly sipped my hot beverage. My mind wandered as my eyes did. Pulling the cellphone out of my purse, I called Victoria and shared with her my doldrums. As always her kind nature, she listened and offered helpful hints. She would like to see me write more. I argued that I am not as inspired as I used to be. Sunny California or at least what I’ve seen of it does not induce any fervor. I am bored with the city, was my retort. She then tells me to find inspiration in the mundane, familiar, and typical surrounding I am in. I want to bless her heart for having the stubborn faith in me.

So here I am starting my attempts to finding inspiration from the uninspiring place, thing, or event.

My emotions are sometimes inactive as I experience the highs and lows of the current changes I’m finding. Truthfully, there are the frequent, divergent, and miscellaneous representations of ideas, or simply put, inspirations. I would be besieged by people, places, encounters, objects, and timings, and easily could put pen into paper (or fingers onto keyboard). However, my passion seems to evade me nowadays. Listless I feel I’m becoming at times. I deviate from my artistic sense and resort to cable television. I have become the unadulterated TV aficionado devoid of sensitivity and the rapture of life and love.

I guess the right to write does not call for prerequisites. But expressiveness comes in verbiage through articulation, eloquence, and even redundancy. It helps, too, when the mind is focused. For how could one write in persuasiveness (to the reader and oneself) if the tendency is to roam and deviate from the atypical source of inspiration?

But inspiration comes within us.

Our own heart encourages us to reveal the colors we see and form in our reveries. Our spirit to sense what need to be experienced and relished dictates us. We only have to sit back and derive joy, or even sorrow, so we could be expressive and indicative of our adventures, thus record them for the purpose of sharing and inducing pensive attraction, if not admiration. We want to convince the thoughtful reader that we feel emotions as we write, or live. A painter does not create a masterpiece because the nude subject is flawless, but because he is induced by his own emotions. His spirit flows from his heart to the tip of his paintbrush and thus transferring his inspiration to canvas. And I guess I have enough juices in my spirit, or vise versa, to formulate a thought, an art, a literature, an expression, or/and an inspiration.

Victoria is right about finding inspiration. I don’t need to look any further or farther. I have it in me.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and
A song you hear though you shut your ears...

- Khalil Gibran