Dear Pogue,

What no letter! A whole week without an envelope of inspiration landing on your door mat and calling to you: “Open me, open me”. It wasn’t that inspiration dried up. No, rather inspiration took annual leave whilst I sat around feeling sorry for myself.

Let me explain. I had helped to look after 2 small children, one of whom merrily ran about with a streaming nose. Many tissues later I left only to feel the onset of a cold a few days after. And it was to be the worst kind! The curl up on the settee with a rug, the lay in bed late in the morning don’t want to see anyone, leave me alone type. It was, without a doubt, man flu.

I know women mock. They’ll tell of how hard child birth is but how can they possibly know of the anguish and discomfort that is man flu? What do you do when your temperature soars and inspiration leaves town? Obviously you sit around and feel sorry for yourself.

So, no letter.

But what is interesting is how (easily?) we can be thrown off track. Then, once off track, the difficulties we can have getting back on. Sometimes when I am writing and there is a flow, even putting down the pen for a few minutes can cause problems. The break. The flow stopping. There seems to be a correlation. Rather I will continue until I find a natural break. A bit like running to a predetermined point and then stopping to catch one’s breath.

You must believe in what you cannot yet see

Joanna Beck

Also, where does inspiration come from? All that stuff we correspond about, where do we find the ideas and content? I am sure we don’t carry it around in our heads. I mean, there are days when I want to write but find myself peering, lost into space.

But isn’t that it?

Yes there are times when ideas just stick to us as we move through life. Things we brush up against attach. An over heard conversation in a coffee shop starts thoughts whirring. A lyric from a song sends the mind on a journey of exploration. The art is to be aware, mindful, attentive to these. To capture them before they escape or evaporate because they will. Write them down, hold them hostage for later use. How many people have I heard of who keep a pad beside their bed so they can ambush ideas that come in sleep? All of this requires a little discipline.

However, there are times when there is nothing, narda, zilch, a big fat zero. Then what.

I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence and the truth comes to me.

Albert Einstein

Well, in such times of creative crisis, I’ve made it my practice to deliberately peer into space. To go to a place where there is silence. To make myself comfortable, some times with my good friend coffee, and wait. A form of meditation. A pause. Why?Because we are resident in an infinite Universe filled with potential. And God is pure creation so creation inhabits all that is around. Further we, made in God’s likeness, are also inheritors of the creative spirit. So it pays us well to make ourselves spend time in silence allowing ourselves to commune with God, to feel the flow of Universe, to cause ourselves to be reminded of our potential to create.

Silence is the language of God. All else is poor translation.

Rumi

For me, that place of silence is a huge depository of ideas. Letters yet to be written, words to be explored and used, emotions to explain and inhabit in my writing. Adventures in test not yet explored.

Does that all sound a little fanciful? Like, how many coffees have you had today! Well it is until you first experience it. You will probably doubt your first experience. But when you return and it happens again in a: “I never saw that one coming” sort of way , you begin to wonder, begin to question, return for more. Then you find yourself believing.

In God, in Universe, resides every text, every book, every poem ever written and, still to be written. Latent potential waiting to be realised. Waiting to become part of the creative process. Our infinite resource if we could but learn how to access. In silence I practice.

Now in answer to your question, remember, how many coffees? Not enough! So I’m off to grind some beans, froth some milk and just smell the aroma.

Yours, waiting to create,

Wic.