I’m seeing my brain awaken again. It’s the consistency of showing up. Inspiration is not a feeling, it’s showing up. And every time one must cross the chasm of despair where the wraiths send up their vapors: You’ve lost it. You’ll never get back to that place of quiet steady productivity. You’re nothing, you fell away, you can’t go back.
And into that chasm, I hoist my metaphysical boombox to my bruised and tired shoulder, and I blast the voice of Paul: Jojo was a man who…
GET BACK, GET BACK, GET BACK TO WHERE YOU ONCE BELONGED
Get back Jojo; get back indeed.
The demons recede and with a little rock’n’roll I’m back.
Is it an efficient process? To hell with efficiency. With even the question of efficiency. It is a necessary process. So do it.
Dust off the piano, the sewing machine. Trade in your valuable acoustic for a cheap grimy electric and a fuzz pedal. Add another chapter to that book you started three years ago. Bake the cake, you know which one.
Because what else would you be doing anyway, dishes? DISHES? Dishes are an infestation. There are always dishes. Someone else can do dishes, or no one, it’s basically the same thing. But you are glorious when you move your body to dance – when you put a song to tape – when you stop trying to make your desires fit into the schedule of those dishes. Make them eat scrambled eggs tonight; eat scrambled eggs all week. Sooner or later, someone will cook something other than scrambled eggs if they are so moved. But you – be moved now. Pick up the paintbrush – accept custom projects that terrify you. Design. Post. Post. Post. Keep making what the crude materialist world will call “content” and you know in your heart is pure treasure, is gold mined in blood and tears, is paid for in endless plates of scrambled eggs and dirty dishes.
Who are you underneath the diapers, the leftover container lids strewn across the tile, the piles of scarves and grey soggy mittens? You are a miner, you are stripping away the mundane layers of a life that has happened upon you. There is gold in your veins, woman, but you may lose some blood to get there. Mine, mine, mine. Come up to the surface for beauty. For this is not the strip mining of men that eats whole forests and pours filthy streams into the aqueducts of our collective conscience. This mine is yours alone, the elevator fits only one. It is lined with mirrors and you must confront the horrors of your sagging eyes on the journey down. The entrance to the shaft is always moving: here it is behind a rock in a stream, the stream you almost didn’t visit because there were dishes. Here, behind a display at the museum on a snowy day. Once you entered through a funny rhyme your husband made. Once in the pre-dawn intoxication of an infant’s soft head.
The patriarchs all go to their steel desks in their steel buildings. They ride the same daily elevators up, in a herd, in the metallic strength of the pack but you, you must search for the entrance to the shaft daily, and you must go down alone. Over the chasm of despair, through the elusive entrance, and down the shaft alone, to dig with your fingernails and bring up glimmers of your true self, for precious few to see.
Spin the gold threads, mothers; weave, knit, play, orate. The sun is up and you must live, lest you forget how to thrive.
