I just cannot sleep. Words knock about inside my brain and cry out for their freedom of expression! They come like a torrent and wash away any vestige of sleep from my distressed eyes. Night cannot hold them hostage and before daylight sweeps in, they force me back to the keyboard. “Freedom of expression! Freedom of expression!”-The clamour grows ever so loud and I dare not deny this literary downpour.
Fingers stealthily work the keyboard lest its drumbeat awaken my clueless husband. Anxiously they await the next idea to form in my mind. “Do not be a prisoner of past words,” they admonish me. “Be the fertile ground for reams of new ones.” I concur and listen earnestly to the inner voices. Fear has no place in a writer’s mind. Truth is foremost and must be bravely told. Any self-doubt or visions of crumbling respectability have to be firmly shown the door.
When everything seems to have fallen into place, there is the nagging feeling that words may run out, they may wander aimlessly without a clue or just plain disappear. During these brief moments of humility and total helplessness arise awe for the wonder of creation, of being an instrument in His hands (hopefully well tuned and graciously receptive).
As mind inevitably loses its concentration and starts to spread out, the invisible mynah of Aldous Huxley’s Island coos gently into my ears, “Attention to the here and the now” and so it shall be.
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