If you want to write, really want to write, you can find inspiration in the strangest places. It lives in the bottom of empty mugs and underneath fingernails. Inspiration has been found in photographs and phonographs and in the want ads. I once found inspiration living under a rock in the back garden, just waiting for some writer to come along and discover it. It was hungry and dehydrated, dying of exposure. "How long have you been waiting here?" I asked, but it didn't have the strength to answer. Inspiration just smiled faintly and expired there in my hands. "I'm so sorry," I said, beginning to cry. "I should have come sooner." I tore down my garden shed and erected a great pyre of wood there in the back garden and burned inspiration like a pagan king of old. The smoke of passing carried inspiration's soul far up and away to the next place. The sun set and darkness came but I danced and moaned and wept around the blaze until it died out. When I awoke midmorning in the smokey dew of the lawn, I stumbled sore and bleary-eyed inside and began to write it all down.
"Do you think you'll ever write your memoir?" she asked.
"Only if I can make the whole thing up."
"That wouldn't be a memoir," she said. "It would just be a story, a lie."
I didn't have the heart to tell her I've just been making it all up as I go along. None of my life has ever really happened. It's a fiction I've been telling myself and anyone else who would listen.
Hello, friends. How are you today?
Later. Love.
