The muse

I have clicked on this blog many times, more times than I have been here to write, more times than any of you have been here to read. I read over the stuff I have written since September 2008, when all those thoughts squabbled and collided like a bumper car ride at the local fairground, when I finally found a release and a way for my will to write, essentially having something to write on a regular basis, a river flowing in to a sea.

I inexplicably love to write, to put pen to paper, to scribble, doodle and draw my way around a page with words, yet with all my ideas over the years on here that I want to spurt out, whether to please or provoke, matter-of-factly or creatively, sometimes I feel myself falling short. Sometimes I have blanks, I have moments when I feel the motor is stuttering and the engine is going to pass out, and that I have nothing more to offer you. And it is in those moments I come back here and reread and go back over my journey so far, like training a writing muscle in my gym of words, going back to basics. But like honing in on building muscle from just training, it is not enough, you need to eat the right foods to supplement, it is as equally important as the training itself. And my food has to have a high content of inspiration.

So I reach out for it, I reach out to you. I can get it from so many things, sometimes big and bountiful, like years of sport or holidays to faraway places, music and movies. Other times it can be a single, solitary thing, abstract and extreme to take my mind down its motorway on a train of thought (read here: Train of thought). But I get it from you too, believe me. I want it from you.

Like Steve McQueen just simply did what he did being himself and inspired others by riding in to a village on a horse, or through streets and field a on a motorbike, or quite simply bouncing a baseball off a concrete wall, I want to see you in what you do, every day, just being you.

I am a team sportsman, I am not a loner in sport, that what it is all about for me, to belong to and be part of something far greater than just me; when I feel I have given my all, help me find more to help to push the team on. Show me where to find it and I will go forth and search for that energy. That sunflower on the balcony, sucking in those Saturday morning rays, greeting me and deflecting them to me as I step out there to have coffee and breakfast before doing things, ‘cos Saturday is a doing things day.

Let me see how to invent things, those home made products, those solutions you manage find. Let me watch you make them, as you focus in on them, stopping at those moments when you scan and adjust and make it up as you go.

If the music is good, dance. Dance with me, flow with me. Shimmy your shoulders and nod your head as you drive to the song that comes on the radio.  I know you have a song in your head like me, so let’s make music. Hold my hand as we walk down the street, a skip in your stride.

Again to see you peruse around the shops, your eyes gliding over all those little products, in your element, to turn around and upward roll your eyes with a smile, telling me how much you are loving this. Just maybe I will begin to smell the same scent too. That impulse in the buy, let me haggle for a second.

Wandering carelessly and endlessly but with a purpose, discovering, by almost stumbling on something, a restaurant, a small shop. And then to revel in the find.

Sit me with me on a ledge and marvel at the masses of green in the valley before our eyes. Then walk before me down the road in to that very valley, brushing your hands over the foliage, stopping to see an insect or something small of colour that lightens up your day, which in turn switches my light on. If all the shades of green in the staggered valley fields are the cake, watching those tanned legs strut in those denim shorts is the cherry on top of it. My fingertips reach out to that inspiration. If I walk in to a desert and find everything in nothing, I know you can too. I know you can find the things that I cannot see or find. Stand on top of a sand dune, your curves stood statue in the wind as it blows through your arms aloft. If we walk in a field of untouched snow and you make a snow angel, you will prompt me to make two of them, maybe an army of them.

From the beach I watch the surf back drop and admire those who expertly cut up and weave the waves on their boards, but in the foreground I gaze upon you delicately stepping between the puddles of rocky low tide crouching at intervals searching for shells, picking out the best ones. I in turn have picked out the best one.

I can really feel the music now, so dance with me once again, in to the night, in heels and a killer dress, ‘cos it raises my heart a beat every time you do. Flashing lights and a good beat, I am surrounded in colour you have given me, my palette and brush are ready, let me paint you, let the canvas flourish.

And most of all when I see you smile, maybe even just a Mona Lisa one, that really does gives me the energy, that is inspiration in its simplest form.