Clear As Mud
If my muse had a shape, how would she appear? As The Winged Victory of Samothrace, perhaps? Probably not. She wouldn’t be so voluptuous and strident - soft and plump, thick in limb and muscular in belly. At least, she wouldn’t be so self-confidant all the time. She likely wouldn’t be an object of man’s desiring. Nor even an object of woman’s desiring. She might not even be an object at all.
Perhaps my muse would be as simple as a curl of campfire smoke.
Or a singular musical note – sounding high and clear – that shatters the grip of a tormented night. The peal of a church bell can sound like that (though we don’t get to hear too many of those these days); a simple arrangement, yet deep in its reverberations. Church bells sweep the cobwebs from my eyes. Remind me that another day has come. That I must stand and leave the warmth of my bed, struggle into my socks and clingy pants and greet my life. My strange work and my odd compromises. My duties and my obligations. But my comforts, too. My coffee pots and tea kettles, my puffy coats and “warm, woolen mittens.”
If a muse could be shaped into an experience, it would be comfort. And if comfort were a season, it would be winter. But just for today. For tomorrow my muse might morph as courage, and her correlating season would then be spring. Just look at those tenacious bulbs, all those determined perennials! And the day after tomorrow she might change again, but into focus this time and, with it, the productivity of long summer hours. The day after that, reflective thought accompanied by autumn. Then back to comfort and sleepy winter.
Muse is a cycle, just like everything else. A spinning wheel. Life-giving just as she is life-taking. Inspiring as she withers, reinforcing as she erodes. All in the same rhythm of inhale and exhale, wake and slumber, work and rest, gain and lose, praise and decry, hold and release.
Some mornings I wake gloriously triumphant and pump my wings like the Goddess Nike. Is that arrogance? Perhaps. Other mornings, I wake knee-deep in limitation and about as clear as mud. Is there a goddess of humility? Ah, yes. I just checked. Her name is Aidos and she hides her face, casts her eyes downward and covers her breast. Humbled, maybe even ashamed, but a goddess just the same. A muse who pairs with Nemesis, the goddess of revenge. Apparently the Greeks knew something about inner conflict and the beautiful, painful, tangled morass of human experience.
My muse is therefore that very cycle, that strange marriage of opposition. She is a kaleidoscope that shifts and clicks into ever changing images. The nod toward the truth of jumbled experience, and the embrace of that very life pulse who whispers in my ear - each and every morning – Wake up, Elizabeth. And pay no attention to your pride, give no heed to your weakness. That is all simply a part of life. Both meaningful and meaningless. The beauty is in the landscape. The significance is in everything that surrounds you. So just look up and out; just keep walking.