*Blog Status update ... Get a coffee and get comfortable if you are gonna read!* When I wake up in a morning the first thing I ask myself are a two simple questions. “Where will my inspiration come from today?” “Who or what is it that is going to get in my way?” The answer to the first question comes from thinking about what I am going to do for the rest of the day. Right now when I wake up I look around and I see Katie and Leo and wonder what today will bring that can add more value to our lives than I could gain by staying at home and watching and listening to the interactions of this miracle. I set high standards for the expectations of my day. At the moment I have a little more free time than normal. I could do many things with this time. I could play computer games, I do seem to do that a lot, but it is more of an evening thing. I could sit in my office listening to music and kill time in a million ways. The first thing I have to do is accept that I have to be in an office, with nothing to do productive for my old job, severely hamstrung to do anything for my new job, I have to take that frustration and kill it quickly, because in dwelling on that I would be the one getting in my own way. Over the last few weeks I have had time to consider what inspires me, not that I set out to do this, but as the crazy haze of my frustration and disappointment of my recent employment started to dissolve I began to take time to notice the things that were happening around me. Now as someone who says that he is willing to accept that Karma plays a roll, and that good things happen to good people, it strikes me as strange that life placed in my path, at this exact moment in time, a small window of opportunity to look through what had gone before and what might come to pass. So I have grasped this vista with both hands and stared at it so hard I now have sun spots. I try to use my down time wisely, I seem to get more of this than many, or maybe I just seem to see it more clearly. I like to do things that stimulate my mind, I read non-fiction, I watch TED talks or internet search anything. I listen to music be it classical in complicated composure or the lyrics of an Eminem song. I try to identify or assimilate what I am seeing and hearing. I question and argue, more with myself than any normal sane person should. I always seem to be looking for an answer to a question that I can’t form in to words, I just know that if I look hard enough, wide enough, deep enough that it will become clear to me what it is I am looking for. I glimpsed it this weekend. Maybe because I was trying to constantly capture the next three things that I would write about in my challenge to list positive things every day. I didnt do that on Saturday. I didnt do it not because I couldnt think of three but because I just couldnt short list three, or five or ten. In the space of a weekend I listed so many things for which I am grateful, that make me happy, that I ran out of ways to write them down. In a bid to try and find a way to express myself over the last few days I have thrown myself back in to poetry. I started listening to spoken word poetry slams, I have already listed a few of my favorites in previous posts, but the one who stands out the most, the one whom shone a sliver of light through the branches of my tree is Shawn Koyczan. I shared a couple of his poems with Karen, a late night when we chat about the world and “stuff” as Katie sleeps. At the end of one particular poem I turned to Karen and said “I want to be as good as Shawn at spoken word poetry”. In that moment I checked myself and listened again to the words of his poetry ringing in my head. Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Right there in that moment I understood something that I had been missing so often. Sitting with Karen late at night, explaining complex social and economical issues in a way that was accessible, smiling at me the she uttered the phrase that would punch me like an Ali butterfly “Well when you put it like that.” Karen had paid me an enormous compliment and I honestly don’t think knowingly. And dinner with Ned and Milica who brought books and learning for Leo and chatted about all sorts of things. Being jokingly asked that I give a mention in a status and make her famous. Then more friends discussing a story of a 50km bike ride and knowing that I will never forget that roast dinner, with that group of people, because as we talked I could see the colours of the stories we shared. I can’t write music, I can’t play a musical instrument, I wish I could, but I can’t. I wish I could write poetry the way that these spoken word poets do, especially Shawn, but I can’t. I wish I could string the words of a rap together the way that Eminem does, again this is not something I can do. But if you ask me to capture a beautiful moment and put it in to words, express an argument in a compelling way, lift some ones day by finding the brilliance in them that they can’t see. This I can do. I have had quite a lot of practice. Maybe not the ten thousand hours that would mark me as an expert, yet still more than enough to come to the self realisation that I can write. That all I really need to do is find the smallest spark of inspiration from a friend or moment or leaf and words spill through my head like a dictionary melting in the heat of my thoughts. It happens all the time, the middle of the night, the middle of the day, it happens so fast some times that unless I happen to be seated in front of a keyboard or have a note book in my hand I miss it, it’s gone. Like the man walking the cliff, on seeing a great artist painting a picture in the sand as the oncoming waves promise to wash it away. Stuck in the dilemma of deciding to rush away and gather some way to capture the art and risk missing it altogether or just to stay and appreciate it whilst he can, in the moment. I have always known what I would do. So as the waves of my words come unbidden crashing through my mind I have often just sat and listened to them swirling and cleansing and then they subside leaving a blank canvas for the next moment that a muse comes dancing my way. I have never rushed to find a keyboard or a pen for fear that those thoughts, those words, might just get washed away. I have the story of the girl in the red dress from when I was only eighteen years old, in the bus stop, in the rain asking me the time as I walked by. The time that the girl on the airplane shared with me the vibrator story. The heart breaking tale of the call girl who lived in Dubai, she made me cry. How I almost became a Jehovah’s Witness, that made me angry. The story of waking up in a tent with the girl who would become my wife, the love story of my life. The story I call lunch with stockings on when I realised that no amount of temptation could ever break me. I have hundreds of these and a new one spins inside my head every day, elephants, crocodiles and Bozeyed Shogs. Stories so happy and so sad that I can make myself change moods from tears of joy to sorrow just telling them silently to myself. The million stories that make up a life time. They are my stories, in my book, from my life. I won’t find them on the internet, no matter how long I search. So from now on, in moments of quiet when I decide I am going to go on an internet rampage searching for an inspiration I am going to stop, count to ten, do my breathing exercises and look to my friends and family and write the stories that make up the branches of that tree. Not a book. Not a poem. Not blog. Just a collection of thoughts and things that come pouring out of my head. I am going to post them here on Facebook, like it or not. I want to be able to remember where I left them, I really hate losing things. So tomorrow when I wake up, you will be my inspiration and I will be getting out of my own way. I am terrified about posting my writing here, in such a public place, but what the hell have I got to lose. Love love people xxx
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 11:14:47 +0000
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