Going after inspiration

When inspiration abandons me – which happens every so often that has become mildly annoying, I’m going after it. I try everything because I’m all out of ego on the matter. Most of the times, I try to lure it back with chocolate cookies.

Sometimes, I let myself write long-handed without a filter, and without the use of pretty words. Just me and my insecurities, the thoughts that I’m afraid to think out loud and which I don’t read again. Instead, I find something creative to do with them, maybe erase them with some water and watch the purple ink stains spread pink on the page.

And sometimes, I try to recreate them on the keyboard but the words spill between my fingers, not on the keys but on the floor. I try to grasp them, but the harder I go after them, the slicker they become. I just wet my socks in disappointment.

Sometimes, I lay on bed and I let my mind wonder in that thin line between sleep and consciousness. I end up with beautiful words. Words that are stones in a lake, because when I try to revisit them I know they are there, but I cannot see them. My thoughts are muddled, ripples on the water surface that doesn’t seem to calm down and smoothen.

Sometimes, no amount of stories or books or poems will help me fill the well of my imagination. Ideas absent, words elusive, I throw myself down a spiral of nots. Not writing, not thinking about writing, not having any ideas whatsoever, not creating images or associations, not sleeping, not feeling satisfied of myself, not being in the mood for other creative or fun experiences.

And sometimes, sometimes, it’s there. Barely. Picking at me from the corner and it’s not easy to let it back in when I know it will abandon me again. But it’s not the fact that I don’t have any other choice, because I really don’t – it’s that I love the time we spend together, and maybe I like myself just a little bit more when it’s here. So, I smile and I let it in, and we sit for a cup of coffee or a story, and –

well, I make sure we have a good time before it wanders off into the sunset. I leave a plate with chocolate cookies next to my laptop just in case.