Inspiration

Trying to write this summer has been hard. For one thing, I have been happily busy - ferrying the kids back and forth to theater camp which they both love, remembering my own foray into elementary school drama, when I snared the prize role of Gollum in "The Hobbit" in fourth grade. It was a blast. I got to draw out my S's and wear blue face makeup and a four foot train of ripped-up black fishnet stockings. Don't ask. I mean, it was New York City in 1970.

Now I'm looking out the window at my California garden trying to write. I'm thinking about all the things I do not say in my writing - all the harder thoughts between and behind the lines. The stories not told. It's beautiful here. My jasmine is blooming, and the smell is so sweet I don't think hard clean thoughts, just dreamy unconnected ones. I think about the view from my old window in New York - mostly the tops of buildings, and water towers of varying sizes. They seemed like silent, faceless beings in their little peaked hats, watching over the city. Sometimes as I sat doing homework in the evening I would look out at their silhouettes against the twilight sky. They seemed a little sinister, authoritarian, like they were thinking, "Well…? Get on with it." If I imagine that they're still out there, hidden behind the jasmine, maybe I'll just jump back into the notebook and begin, see where it takes me. As Flannery O'Connor once said, "If I waited for inspiration, I'd still be waiting."