Gliding with Grace

           There was never really anything quite like putting pen to paper. When everything before me was just right, the flow carried me. When I made sure I would be writing on the first sheet atop a ream of paper so that the tip of my pen could be cushioned nicely as it scribbled my words, I knew I could produce a work that someone other than me would at least consider. And if I used a sharpened pencil with a broken point on a single sheet over hard surface, my confidence was bolstered and my ego inflated. I knew the words spilling out of me would arrange themselves without much effort on my part. There were even a few times when I was convinced that "inspiration" had taken over my mind and body and had achieved something unparalleled to what I produced that came before it. There was a sense of evolving, if not improvement. I may have been naive. I may, at times, have felt myself invincible, and I was - all of the above. It was as if I were operating through the haze and with the clarity of a drug that either sped me up or slowed me down. Actually, the real drugs accelerated me in the short term and drained me in the long term. 


          Over this period of time, this "long term" when there was no writing, I witnessed the thoughts leak out of my head one by one like the dripping of a faucet whose fixing had been left for too long. The bills skyrocketed, and my heart began to niggle at me before complaining and then crying and then finally settling into numbness, idleness, and indifference. For a few years I turned to the coolness of math and science, in which probing, provocative thought isn't as necessary unless one has passion for these disciplines. I wrote with pens on sheets on hard tops and dull pencils hugged by beds of paper. The numbers and symbols meant very little. 


          I found this lovely pen last week on the sidewalk. My dog (Saffron) sniffed at it while I bent down and pretended to pick up his shit for the benefit of the peering neighbors across the street (it's not every time I have a plastic bag at my disposal, come on), and I thought, This could be genuinely useful to me very soon. There's no reason it shouldn't. But I have to find a way to shock my heart first. 


          It's gliding with grace now.