Keys

 Today I wanted to sit down at a piano. I also had the impulse to write. It may be something in the hands, an instinct that is deep in my brain, left from the cave man days. Desirable by instinct. In my mind, I am passionate about something, but something elusive. This week has been what you call inspirational!  On Sunday, we had a birthday for my son, his 21st. It was a great success of a party! We all left feeling happy and the young adults didn't even come home and finish off all the booze, by Thursday morning two bottles of wine sat prim with ribbons on the end of his dresser. 

And inspiration, defined as such, as the ancients used the word for air or breath, looks about right bouncing around in front of my vent in shiny balloons, giving them life. This week when things started to go awry, I ran off to Roswell to hide out deep in the back of a Civil War Era cemetery in silence. The weather was a perfect 70-something with a breeze that blew long, soft, silky blades of green grass like a dream. As I was sitting away from the greater world, the only sound was the earth's sweet breath. The sunlight, glittering gold, seemed distant above the rustling of newly changing leaves. It was so beautiful. 

I was in Roswell, GA, a historic southern town with much history and gravestones dating to the 19th century. With large white plantation homes, the glory isn't only architectural, but also held within their walls the parents of beloved American president Theodore Roosevelt. 

And I, for a miserable moment, a magnificently wonderful, breathtaking moment, read my Nathaniel Hawthorne book to the spirits there who remembered it as new, and imagined they were very pleased indeed as the winds picked up. I was laying back on a wall, like I was in the secret garden, trying very hard to read it well.

When I came home and the balloon danced, I remembered about the ancients creating inspiration from the air we breathe, and it has danced and shivered and twirled there all week. 

(I say to Lilly, put on some music, and she plays Beethoven's moonlight Sonata for me)

I decided to write short stories for my family for Christmas, I hope I will. I'm really pretty bad about things, especially without a computer. I write this on a phone. I've begun and I have more ideas to transform. It has been a few months of reading short stories. Last night I started to imagine my new idea coming to life, and from the voice of an old woman, I remembered that Chekov had me with his story of an old man. Which brings me back to the keys which inspired me to be here to begin with. Had he been playing the piano?

 As I was driving my son to work I played a piece of piano music. Usually they play new music through headphones and I've been listening to terrible new wave music This is very bad for everyone. But the classical music was great. So when a piece came on in a certain unexpected key I felt inspired again, because that is how I have been all week. The music was not high or low, and it had me envision a perfect lady at a moment of genteel grace, which was like a fairy tale from a modern perspective. And especially in my car, lol. So I was pretty taken by it, how neat to think of time and tone, a sounding bell, as melody in a certain key. 

In the cemetery I pictured the earth as if I could hold it like dirt balled up in my hand. And it was dirt and it was worthless. But something told me that it was not worthless. That the mess we make it out to be was like lost breezes that give life to the beautiful, inspired world. The meaning of which we take for granted.

That inspired me. As I am sitting here, with these terrible instincts, I know how brilliant I am, not as a writer, no, but as a living, breathing life.