photo courtesy of photophilde
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Eyes closed, then screen dialed to black (yes, you can do that and still write) to turn my mistake monitor off.
A strange feeling, this blackness, and at first it is hard to write without seeing words.

But it feels good to pay attention to something other than words, to breathe deep, to let my head rise and fall, to really feel what I am doing, to hear the world around me, that truck that just passed in the street, the almost Niagara-like sound of my computer’s roar, steady and strong, never concerned at all about what I am trying to do. 

But then I hit that same dead stop I hit when the lights are on,

the most feared moment in the creative process,

because any rest introduces the possibility of running out of words, followed by the almost unbearable pain of having to figure out a way to start again.  

I can touch the darkness now, and I can’t believe this, but I see a stalking lion, or maybe I’m just seeing what Jung wants me to see. Sometimes I wonder if the only archetype is imagination, but I was writing about rest and magic, rest and magic… 

…and I want my eyes, my head, my neck muscles, my mind, spirit, fingers and heart to take me someplace else, anyplace else, someplace where flight is possible, where touching stars with burning hands and frozen fingers is real, where my mouth can kiss lightning and hold fire in its teeth, where day-to-day drudgeries and weight fall off in a world unrestricted by the gnashing constraints of life.

And for a moment I feel like I really can fly, and I really am free, until I start thinking about painting my Hook Man paintings, and my sister asking me

“Why do you feel so restrained?”

And that lets in the fight between wanting to be carefree and needing to be responsible, between moving somewhere I can dress in shabby clothes when I want to and shave only when I have to, and staying in The Comfortable States of America, where I can keep my reputation as a bad boy without having to be.

And now I let language and emotion lead, peeking at my fingers through half-closed eyes, watching them fly. 

Until I feel how restrictive my keyboard is, how unlike my piano’s keys, how little room there is for dance. Once upon a time while playing my Fender Rhodes, the one I later sold to Bob Rhodes, I actually rearranged the parallel rows of black and white into sweeping fans stacked on top of each other.

And so I can’t help but wonder now..

canimightiisitpossibleto [1] FLY?

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