Who knew . . .

. . . that ironing could provide inspiration??? Picture it - Sophia Petrillo, standing in front of the ironing board, the steam rising up (cheap facial), and her brow furrowed in thought!! Okay, so it wasn't Sophia Petrillo. It was me. I'm ironing, the steam rising up (cheap facial), and thinking about the fact that I have written very little lately. Suddenly - inspiration, the Orm, the Muses singing loudly and clearly - the ideas begin to gel together into some coherent form. I love it when that happens. Lately, coherence and writing did not seem to go together. Today - perhaps the steam reached deep into my brain and caused the synapses to start synapsing - the coherence slowly began to emerge. Whew!

I just haven't felt the desire in my writing lately. There are brief, transitory, moments of feeling, but nothing that lasts beyond a chapter or two. I want the feeling, the passion, the drive, and the obsession! I want the DESIRE to write - here, there, and everywhere, in a box with a fox, in a house with a mouse, in a train, in the rain, with green eggs and ham, Sam I am (not). I feel lost and bereft on the days (weeks, months . . . or so it seems) when I don't write. Try as I might (and trust me, I've tried . . . again and again, to the moon and back), I have not been able to write, to feel, to experience the driving passion. I get an idea, brilliance in motion, and the brilliance quickly fades like the semi-permanent dye I might one day (soon) use to cover the grey in my hair.

So, I'm ironing, thinking, ironing, thinking, and . . . what if I combine this, with that, and add a little bit of something-something . . . whoa!!!!, is that brilliance beginning to emerge??? How long will it last? Am I, like Maria in the convent, chasing moonbeams on the sand? Will this idea work? Will the DESIRE explode from within and become an obsession? Will I think constantly about the project, dreading the fact that I owe, I owe, so off to work I go??? Will the ideas slowly wane like the full moon until they disappear, so it seems, all together?

I have no clue. I'm grasping at proverbial straws and hoping beyond hope, that this time the idea will stick, the words will flow, and the obsession can begin.