Dream Warrior

     It rained every day on our vacation.  Normally rain and camping aren't my favorite combination, but I didn't mind it so much on this past trip.  It rained mostly at night, and I was surprised to find that I love the sound of rain drops falling on a tent just as much as I love the sound of them hitting my bedroom window back at home.

     One night, after listening to a thunderstorm pass overhead, I was having trouble falling back asleep.  There I laid wide awake in my sleeping bag, when PG sat straight up.

     "I have NO idea how to do this.", she declared loudly.  Her voice had a touch of tween-ish attitude we've been experiencing lately, so my response to her was a bit curt:

     "Do what? What are you talking about?"

      "I don't know how to capture this tree." I relaxed a little and a smile spread across my face.  It's always fun for me to catch a loved one talking in their sleep.  I wanted to get as much out of this conversation as I possibly could.

      "Why do you need to capture the tree?" I asked her.  She mumbled something of which I could only hear part of, which is unfortunate, because judging from the bits I did catch- something about "the animals" and "courage"- it was likely a very entertaining answer.

     Now, I don't know what she was dreaming.  She didn't remember anything the next morning when I asked her about it.  She had just finished reading Tolkien's The Hobbit a few hours prior to her bedtime, so I imagine her dream was influenced by the fictional world of faeries and dwarves and Hobbit adventures that she had just left.  So it was in the spirit of those adventures, with her subconscious wide open to me, that I reached out to squeeze her hand and tell her, "Don't give up.  I know you'll find a way to take that tree."

     She nodded and then slowly lay her head back down upon her pillow.  I watched her for a moment and then rested my head too.  And before I closed my eyes, I wished that my daughter, that night in her dreams, would know victory.

 

Muses and Demons

     For the last week, I've been writing blog posts in my head.  I've been talking to you guys about so many things, most of them sad, because it seems that's mostly what the world is filled with lately.  But then, before I could get time with my laptop, some other tragedy or horror was announced, and whatever imagined prior conversations I was having became moot as new thoughts and conversations pushed the old ones aside.  I have such a jumble of thoughts to express right now.  So I'm turning off the news in an attempt to force any new atrocity to wait.  I'm putting in my earbuds.  I'm closing my bedroom door and hoping that the Muse shows up-the one that helps me funnel my thoughts onto this trail of words that are being forged by this blinking cursor.
     Muses are real.  Did you know that?  I can feel them.  I think everyone can if they pay close enough attention when they are doing something that they feel passionate about.  However, to be honest with you, I think it's the absence of a Muse that proves their existence to me more than anything else.  A friend once told me that she could tell from reading my posts that "writing comes easily" to me.  Easily, HA! When I can get into a "zone", when I feel the inspiration that allows me to express myself, when my "Muse"-if you will- shows up, then yes, it is easier, but it never feels easy.  It feels like labor, but in the end, I usually have something to show for it.  Sometimes I'm even proud of that thing.  It makes it worth it.  However, when the Muse doesn't show up, when I sit and stare at a screen, when minutes tick by with nothing accomplished, when structuring every sentence is torture- that feels more like a stillbirth.
    I think creative geniuses have lots of Muses, and I think they are good at accessing them.  They know what music, what mindset, what physical setting will call forth their creativity.  They hone these skills over time, but it's my opinion that they're born with their minds and spirits wired for it.  The door between the creative realm and reality swings easily for them.
    Yesterday, with the news of Robin Williams' passing, it occurred to me that the door that allows one's Muse to pass through admits more than just creative inspiration.  It also admits demons.  I don't know why, but doesn't it seem that the price for the amount of beauty and creativity one puts into the world is paid it's weight in the amount of demons one has to battle? How many artists, how many actors, how many writers and poets can we name that are notorious for not just their talent, but for the demons they've battled? It makes me wonder if demons and muses are cousins. Maybe twins. (Twins makes sense.  It goes with good and evil, yin and yang, the paradoxes that are entwined all over the mysteries and understandings of our world.)
      I know this is a silly fantasy, but often when I hear about someone passing by their own hand,  I wish that I had the power to time travel back and show myself to them like a Dicken's ghost.  I wished this yesterday.  I wished I could have shown Mr. Williams how loved he is.  I wished that I could have shown him the world without him in it, so he could've seen how much he's being missed. I wished I could have made him understand that he wasn't really alone, that it was only the demons talking extra loud.   But then I realize it may not have even mattered. Maybe knowing all that would not have been enough.  Maybe he was just tired- tired of battling the demons everyday.  Or, maybe he was just weary of living in this world.  I understand that.  I'm weary today too.  There's a war in Israel, a Christian genocide happening in Iraq, people are beheading children and spiking their heads for the sake of their own God, and we sit in our living rooms and view it all on YouTube.

God help us all, and I mean that.

But then, also today, I read Anne's Lamott's Facebook post in which she reminded us that laughter is just carbonated holiness.  I like to think about laughter that way.  And I think about all the carbonated holiness that Mr. Williams brought into the world.  I'm thankful for it, and I'm planning to drink it in whenever I watch his movies.  I'm going to throw my head back and let all that beautiful holiness roll out of me in the form of laughter, and I'm going to think his name into the Universe, and I'm going to thank his Muse, and I'll be glad for him that his Demons can't torture him any more.

Rest in peace, O captain, my captain.