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

On leaving the rock...

Like ocean drifters below the surface, all of us are swept along the great currents. Some seem powerless against even the lightest of eddies, virtual plankton at the mercy of events, emotions and circumstances. Others fight, dashing against the rush like a voracious billfish, powerful and flighty. Even the great whales, whose power and grace propel them steadily in whatever direction they choose, ride the global gyres in seasonal migrations across the seas.

Now I face changing currents. Like a river adjusting its flow to a new obstruction, my own life has reacted to dramatic events that will shape my future. I put many of those obstacles there and I have negotiated tracks through and around them. I will not stop, any more than a river will stop, even if it is dammed. Mine will not be a passive ride, however. Like a piscine predator I will dart into the current to snatch prizes that I need to keep myself whole. The infinite twists of the complex, asymmetrical synchrony will continue to push me from all sides, forcing a reaction simply to hold my place.

But I will not hold my place any more than the drifting plankton or the speedy billfish. I refuse to be the barnacle that settles into a permanent residence after a youth of riding the currents among the planktonic community. As an adult, the barnacle fastens itself to a rock and begins sifting passing morsels from the very community it was only recently a member of.

Perhaps it was fear of a barnacle-like existence that led me to my sweet ylang. Rather than living a vicarious life of spectating, I chose to leap into the current and swim. She too, detached from the safety and resignation of her rock to swim with me. Powerful currents pushed against us - we rode those currents and swam against them at times. Drifting and darting, we went places we wanted to go, avoided certain dangerous waters, and flirted inside the jaws of bigger fish hungry to make a meal of us.

Like life within the complex food chain of the sea, there were dangers lurking in the depths. By leaving our rocks we exposed ourselves. Each of us was attacked by our own predators. Both were wounded. We comforted each other for a time but ultimately our individual pain was our own to endure.

Now we have swam, hurting but healing, apart. This, I am convinced, is necessary. Although I've returned to the family I love, I'll not return to a sessile mode. Less of a spectator and more of a participant - that is the legacy I will seek. I will make mistakes and may be wounded again, but it will be in the company of my family. My regret over outcomes of my own past actions primarily or exclusively center around the hurt that I've caused to those who loved me, both within that family and outside it. Although I never intended malice, I know that I've left feelings of betrayal inside those I care most about. I hope and pray for forgiveness.

Now is the time for both of us to swim, kicking to keep our heads above the surface. Certainly things might have been different - that will always be true. Our time together has improved my own fitness and, I want to believe, that of my sweet ylang. I can see that she's cried. But I also know that she's learned. She is stronger than she knows. She is not at the mercy of the currents but fully capable of swimming free. Swim, girl.