Feeling revelatory today, I suppose...

Sometimes I imagine that someone out there reading this stuff on the interwebthingy (and I know that sometimes someone does read it because I see IP addresses in my stats that are not my own) wonders "How did this guy get so weird?".

Well, that is a long story, but I'm going to give a bit of it to you today instead of something - er, funny? - from one of my alter egos.

I emailed my muse yesterday. I don't know what possessed me to do such a stupid thing, but there you have it. Let me clarify, though, as the woman I emailed isn't literally my muse in that my muse is not one literal person. My muse, whoever and whatever she is, is something that I've seen in a number of women through my life. This woman I emailed, Jane, just happened to be the locus of that whatever - spiritual energy? - for a period of time in my life. There had been women who had played this role before and there have been a number of women who have played that role since then.

When I meet one of these women it sets off a stirring in my soul to create something or live in a different way, but it isn't purely a good thing, because at the same time, the woman who falls into this rule is forever obscured from me. I simply cannot see one of these women for who she really is. I remember one woman/muse named Allison who was perceptive enough to see what was happening and one day she said to me "I'm not who you think I am" which I had partly known but I had found it easier to ignore this fact than to face up to it. Allison was a very special muse in that she was the first one that I knew where I had some inkling of what was going on. There was definitely something sexual about the whole thing despite the fact that the person I was attracted to was a purely spiritual thing which superimposed itself upon a normal human being. Luckily for Allison and myself we never gave in to this because I'm sure it would have left me totally empty and depressed since I would not have been making love to the person I had thought I was. It would have been more like visiting a prostitute or masturbating than making love.

So, what did I hope to gain by emailing Jane? She probably doesn't have my muse living in her anymore and since I never knew her as she was in reality rather than always veiled by my muse. I don't know exactly. During a creative writing class I took recently, I had to write some poems and I was struggling with one trying to get some idea that I knew was good to turn into a good poem. What a piece of bunk. Good ideas never make good literature. Good literature escapes ideas, breaks out of them or even gives them life. A good idea my be a pretense for a good work of literature or it may fit nicely into a foreword or a proposal, but that is about it. So I decided to simply write about whatever I wanted instead of what I knew would be good. And when I made the decision, an image of Jane jumped up into my mind and then I just started writing and I think the results came out pretty well.

This got me to start thinking about Jane, but I've often thought about these woman/muse symbionts and rarely do I make an effort to contact them. Sometimes I do when I feel particularly bereft of creative energy or if I am nostalgic for some mythical golden age of my life. I searched for Jane on one of those "find your old friends" sites and found her quite easily and sent her an email. Oddly enough she emailed me back. I know I should not pursue this communication - and yet... And yet I hope that we'll email back and forth and somehow she will still have part of my muse in her, but I don't think it is the sort of thing that sticks around.

I plan on keeping this communication hidden. This worries me, too. If this was innocent, why would I want to hide it? Why am I scared that my girlfriend will find out?

Reading The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Wishing saturday afternoon would extend for another week
Plotting to have Hebrew National hot dogs for dinner