The Muse is a Jealous Mistress

I hold the art of writing in too high regard to dare call myself writer. I think I shall change my Profile: occupation Gentleman. Writing, like any pastime fit for this kind of person and the female equivalent, is an arena of infinite striving, especially when, as in my case, its only object is to express what cannot be said. I’m obliged to content myself with harvesting a little from the infinite ocean of what can be said; but to do it in a manner worthy of Nature, the only deity I acknowledge.

For I maintain that every creature recognises its kinship to Nature, whether consciously or not; whereby Nature is our Mirror and is made One through its manifest kinship with ourselves—as in the sense “we are one family, because all these are related to me, and I to them”.

These musings are inspired by the thought “The Muse is a jealous mistress”, which arrived in my head yesterday out of the blue.

I may not be a writer, in any professional sense, but it’s my constant wish to surrender to the creative Muse, renouncing all other gods, for she is an aspect of Nature in its role as patron of Creation.

Nature is conservative: its laws are broken at our peril. We are creatures of DNA, and DNA holds the accumulation of Nature’s wisdom along with its mistakes.

In this Northern hemisphere, it is Spring, but I cannot begin to describe its beauty, only respond to the urgency of its summons to my soul.

I have said “The Muse is a jealous mistress”: the assertion must be supported with further words, or discarded as mere fancy. I feel her punishing me for ignoring her call. Sometimes I consider myself attentive enough but the favours she shows me remain scant. Must I dedicate myself entirely to her service?

I have scribbled but my endeavours have yielded fiaschi (plural of fiasco, flask). It is said that when Venetian glassblowers messed up a delicate piece, they would turn it into a common wine-flask, whose shape was of little importance. So I shall garner them, and this morning in the hours before dawn, she my Muse whispers “Failure’s no shame”.

Sometimes I give up the words and make things out of plywood

In desperation I have been exhausting myself in a less demanding medium than words: plywood. It started when I found in a second-hand shop a handsome bookshelf, just when I had been asking the Universe to provide one. (Yes, Cosmic Ordering works for me, but I prefer to obey the existing Cosmic Order rather than to disturb its tranquillity with my concupiscence.) I installed it in the shelf on my side of the bed, but it wanted a mate, according to my mate. So like Geppetto making a son Pinocchio for his barren wife, I built one (a shelf, not a son) from plywood. They looked good together, but there was plywood left over, so I built them a connecting bridge whose canopy-edge has a motif echoing the same curves. I’ll show you the snapshot when the camera batteries have charged.

Now, my Muse, shall we go tripping again, along Spring’s burgeoning paths, fashioning garlands of words, as of yore? Soon, soon.