Thinking about my muse.

Today, on one of those sunny perfect fall Colorado days with a cobalt blue sky, a light breeze, 70 degree temperatures, nothing to do but enjoy a good friend's company and my daughter's sweet conversation, I despaired that my muse, Vast Unhappiness, has deserted me.  She used to be ever-present at my elbow, whispering darkness and loss into my thoughts until all I could weave with my words was grief.  She dressed in black, hid her face, pressed on my chest with all her weight.  Write, she said, and I did.  I thought she could save me.  She nearly did the opposite.

What can happiness do for a writer?  When I wake in the morning and love my bright yellow sheets, the slant of light streaming in the window, the song of the Mountain Chickadees in the ash tree, what is there to write?  I spring from bed and head to the kitchen to do my five minutes of yoga while the coffee brews.  This isn't the life of an intriguing, deep-thinking writer.  My daughter pads out into the kitchen and reaches her slender arms up to me.  When I pick her up, I remember the baby the nannies handed me six years ago in Addis Ababa, the way she leaned her little head against my chest.  She still does that now.

At night, after Mitike fell asleep, I used to open my laptop and make myself write 1500 words before I went to bed.  My muse helped.  All I felt for the world was flat, or heavy.  Nothing mattered but the words I put on a page.  Sometimes, I didn't know what I wrote.  I typed, and watched the word-counter, and was not there.

Tonight, I sit for a long moment and love the sound of the crickets, the little lamp my sister gave me for warm light, this worn green chair that was my Gram's.  When I consider what to write, because I know discipline will make me the writer I want to be, my thoughts drift to this perfect day:  lunch in a Denver park with a good friend and Mitike; a walk in the tall grasses; an impromptu game of "500"; a trip to the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Denver Botanic Gardens, the glass other-worldly and lovely, rising between flowers and plants as if it grew; a rainstorm from which we sheltered in a magical green tunnel of bamboo; a double rainbow while thunder boomed to the north and we stood in sun; dinner at a tiny Ethiopian restaurant on Colfax.  What else can I write tonight but happiness?

I could write and write about the way the sun filtered into that green tunnel of bamboo.  A reminder:  my muse is the world, and she is with me still.