Fragments From Floyd

The muse is both the deity and the messenger... for it is surely not only for our own sakes that the gods are willing to appear to us and breathe their holy fire into our work. The muse, when she appears, takes us out of our little life and thrusts us into the world. -- Deena Metzger, Writing for Your Life

Yeah. I need to be thrust out into the world. Come on, muse. Thrust me. It might take two of ya. I dare ya. I've had enough of basting in my own juices in my little life. One can marinade in nostalgia and simmer in solipsistic solitude only so long before the dish gets a gamy off-flavor. Let's vary the menu a little, shall we? I have a nice barn, a fine dog, two beautiful creeks and I have served them over and over. But they are not the world. My memories are not the whole of consciousness. I've given it away freely (and worth every penny of it)-- my gardening tales, and stories from the trail, and philosophies about heating with wood and some of the yarn of how we got to Goose Creek and whatever comes to mind from my back yard. I've written every day for eighteen months so that "the morning pages" seem safely set apart for the act of writing. They no longer dawn each day like a punishment but more like an opportunity to relieve myself of pent up language, like being "milked" as blind John Milton has described the urgency to get down the words.

I have the intimation that perhaps soon, writing for the sake of writing will not be the only point and reason for writing. I have a sense of impending purpose. Perhaps this is only the coming of spring talking, for this is a fact: under the snow, blossoms grow in buds and energy stirs in roots and rhizomes in frozen ground. It is the dead of winter, but I feel currents moving underneath me that I cannot explain. I am ready to flow and leaf and flower, a perennial incarnated each year into some new thing bearing new fruit.

And the Muses looked at each other this morning and said "maybe we need to postpone the thrusting for another year or two. Ya think?"