The morning is peaceful and concordant, and all the cats are purring. Sunlight filters softly through the window, illuminating the room with a pink glow, casting light upon a simple life, a satisfied life. I am in bed, beside me rests the person I love, the person who loves me, my perfect puzzle piece. He sleeps soundly, his chest rising and falling to the melody of his dreams. I feel his warmth beside me, and I know that I am not alone. Our two cats sit near the foot of the bed, kneading blankets and humming their feline song. I feel their warmth through the blanket, and I know that I am not alone.

I have the option to rise from bed, to shower and prepare a warm cup of coffee. I have the option to remain in bed, warmed by love and feline affection. There's no worry about missing work, I am secure in life, love, and livelihood. I don't need to be anywhere; where I am is exactly where I'm supposed to be. I feel my partner shift slightly, and I know I am not alone. I hear the cats purring, and I know I am not alone. If I were to look at my phone, I would see messages from the people I care about, and I know I am not alone. I am connected with other human beings, I am not alone.

The morning light is beautiful, I see hints of pink clouds from the little gap between window and curtain. If I were a painter, I would paint the morning sky. If I were a photographer, I would document these heavens, commemorating forever the softness of the morning. If I were a writer, I would write about the loveliness of the natural world. I sometimes create art, but I am not a painter. I sometimes take photos, but I am not a photographer. I sometimes write prose and poetry, but I am not a writer. So I lay still, content with experiencing and committing the morning beauty to memory. I am myself, and I am not alone.

I decide that it is not quite time for me to rise. Later in the morning, after the pink clouds have faded and the sun hangs high in a bright ocean of cerulean blue, I will make coffee, I will feed the cats, I will read the morning newspaper and respond to my friends. Later in the morning, I will wake beside the love of my life, and we will share a smile. I am not alone.

I am in love with the wonder of life, and this love has transformed a simple and mundane existence into a fantasy. I am grateful to be alive. I close my eyes, ready to sink back into the soft embrace of sleep. I am not alone, and all the cats are purring.

Snow falls into the waves. By the thousands, flakes unify with the water while I sip coffee and watch, separated from the chill by my sweater, the fire I lit upon waking, the tall pane of glass that overlooks Keuka Lake.

I dream of winter because the lake is for summers. It’s not cheap at any time of year to rent a house on a shore: if you’re spending the money, you do it when you can kayak or swim or fish, or at least read a novel in the shade of a tree without the upstate January driving you indoors. My wife and I married within sight of our lake in July 2008; since then, her parents have rented a house on Keuka for a week every summer for us to gather. Those seven days are a highlight of the year because they exist outside of man-made time, without external demands or appointment calendars. There is food; there is love; there is the water. Two million years ago, glacial ice scraped out the valleys that would fill. Since then, the lake has been. Lakes invite being.

We have a couple kayaks and a canoe in our garage where we ought to park a car. Between May and October, I’ll hoist the boats atop our vehicles, lash them down and drive fifteen minutes to the public beach, solo or with the family. We admire the various lake houses as we paddle. Our favorites are not the new constructions, whose thousands of square feet dwarf the family cottages they replaced. We prefer the homes that have been here for at least the fifteen years we have, the old favorites.

“I wish we could live in that one,” my daughter said once as our canoe glided by.

“We could have owned a lake house,” I answered. “I started college as a business major on a finance track. Fund managers make a lot more money than teachers.”

“Why did you become a teacher?” she asked.

“People in finance told me to expect 80-hour work weeks, and I knew I wanted a family. A house on a lake is no good if you don’t have time to be with your family. And I wanted to teach,” I added. “I believe in it.”

My own father passed on lucrative promotions that would have uprooted us from our home and schools; he did, genuinely, attend every baseball game and concert. I understood then, as his son. I understand as a father now, and I hope my children will, too.

Regardless, I chose my path. As I told friends at the time I changed my major, I did not want to dedicate my life to earning more money for rich people—I wanted to teach; I wanted to have a family. These were the right choices. There are good days and bad days, but I do not pine for a road not taken. My hours are meaningful and good. The road ahead has unseen twists and turns, and there may be bridges out. Accidents. I feel optimistic, though, that I can continue to glance in the rearview mirror and see a life well-lived. Be a simple kind of man, Lynyrd Skynyrd sang. Be something you love and understand.

A teacher can live securely, not luxuriously. It is still possible my wife and I could someday retire to a lake house of our own through a combination of prudence and luck, but well-lived lives do not necessarily yield dollars. I am at peace with that truth. All the same, as my kayak cuts through Keuka’s waves, I dream sometimes of occupying one of those homes for decades rather than a rented week. I dream not just of summer but winter days, of that coffee and snow on the water. I dream of watching seasons pass over the water a morning at a time so I am part of the cycle of the lake. Of being there.

Under the starry night, I dream of a different life. I am thinking of golden cities and exotic creatures. All the people wear vibrant clothes ,their earie smiles an antidote to the melancholy of the outer world.

I am watching them dancing and sweet talking to each other ,their towns filled of beautiful flowers and small animals running around. There is no pain here, no thoughts or feelings , only the hope of a brighter future.

I browse through all the books I could’ve read but didn’t

wondering if the squandered hours would suffice to devour

my library whole

I think of all the time I have and of all the time I had

peeling my eyes away from tantalizing covers and dancing words:

mid-pirouette, mid-conveyance

all the misspent hours come back to haunt me in my dreams

I regret not devouring a book when I should have,

not subsuming the knowledge it offered

not heeding its beckoning whispers

come, it said

I have bewitched words to charm readers with its syntactical elegance

But my eyes were lost in the bedazzling visuals and the hollow enticements

of social media

my wonderland is slipping into a realm of books,

where time is fiction; a non-existential glitch

I fall into the warm embraces the words have to offer

feather into the very-much real characters and

breathe deliberately and conscionably in

air bedecked with winsome words.

I have seen a more beautiful world that I can’t unsee

One where enemies are loved and captives are set free

One where darkness isn’t feared because we’ve made it our friend

We look it in the eye and say “don’t worry. This isn’t the way things end.”

Where we walk with Light and love in our mind

Where we look ahead with hope, learning from what’s behind

I have seen a more beautiful world that I can’t unsee

But this road isn’t easy, I hope you’ll still walk with me

It Involves laying down privilege, admitting when we’ve walked astray

But when we receive mercy, how much easier it is to give it away

When I know the depths of my darkness, only then can I truly believe

There is hope for a better world, and it can only start with you and me.

I have seen a more beautiful world that I can’t unsee.

Everything that I am has been inspired by someone or something or some experience. I’ve been motivated by emotion, conflict, desire, but my inspiration has been Gestalt, part/whole in influence, from interaction with people, places and events.

Music, my dad, when I was five and he let me blow into an old, musty tasting trumpet he never practiced, played often or did anything with other than drag it out on some random occasion. Then the instrument disappeared, and the inspiration/influence didn’t resurface until six year later. The rest is a saga long journey worthy of Ulysses.

Art, probably instigations of my mother, something she wasn’t encouraged to follow and resented it her lifetime without ever framing it as such. I learned about my interest in art while playing with animal hand puppets, following her to the basement as she explained my abilities and interests to a neighbor. In some quantum way, although she really didn’t know it then, she was right.

This is the yin and yang of my life. Fortunately it didn’t decimate my very being. But the struggles and triumphs and setbacks and rebirths involved in my crafts, presents a viable definition of who I am and where my inspirations emanated from.

My subsequent experiences then procreated side paths. Beliefs, convictions, distractions, such as trying to write, understanding what makes a writer. Which in turn, redirected me to my life of art and music and then to the present.

The “Present” is a wily Kraken. A Loki trickster. For the life of me, I don’t know why people put so much stock in “living in the present.” To me it’s all a matter of: “It is what it is.” if anyone has a bead on that little cliche.

My inspiration comes from brief, all too brief moments of experience along a path of exploration. I don’t know how else to paraphrase it. The trick, and honestly, it does resemble some kind of Svengali trick, is in recognizing the moment and storing it in an organic stasis until you have reached a time and place and awareness to understand it, without getting distracted by mixed messages and semantics and profit for profit sake social leveraging…

Oh. But you want me to be specific? I think it all starts with a sound slap on a small, shriveled behind.

#prose #inspiration contest #inspiration #life #parts #wholes #Gestalt #essay #art #music #writing #william calkins #roarke

Not on a wrist, the working watch at the back of a jewelry box taunts and teases, believing audaciously while lying there all alone in the dark, it should be worn, unaware it was rejected intentionally. Somewhere an old woman winds her cuckoo clock each morning and has done so for decades, first thing, as if there is some great meaning to the seconds, minutes and hours, and the sound of the cuckoo's caw, until she went deaf. Big Ben stands tall on the other side of the pond, as a narcissist would, boasting of his stature, reminding the masses that they cannot run from time, until he fell silent under construction. And right there on its face, power up a phone anywhere. The time presents itself greedily, first in line, do this, do that, hurry up, silently taking hostages, capturing slaves, intercepting the imagination by rule of thumb.

A busy woman desperately needs a break for inspiration, and sits down to relax in a quiet room holding in her weary hands the book Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. When she opens up the book and starts to read, the words begin a battle with the ticking emanating from an enamel silver clock hanging on the wall above her head. It possesses a second hand rhythm closely aligned and also very much at odds with her heartbeat as she tries to ignore the distraction. Minutes pass until in anger she cries out, "Make it stop," and she contemplates getting up and ripping the clock right off the wall. Thinking of either putting it in the drawer underneath the sweaters, or throwing it mightily against the opposing wall, she is titillated at the thought of the obliteration of time when the open book curiously demands her full attention and she reads,

"She takes stock of her hands, which are shrinking a little, warping a little, as mine are. Gnarling has set in, the withering of the mouth; the outlines of the dewlaps are beginning to be visible, down toward the chin, in the dark of the subway windows. Nobody else notices these things yet, unless they look closely; but Cordelia and I are in the habit of looking closely."

Asking no questions, the ticking abruptly stops, as if it was never there in the first place and the rest of the chapter she is reading makes its own silent perfect music, an engaging motionless dance. Closing the book, she breaths in and out, slowly, outside of the clock, picks up her pen ready to write her own chapter and it flows as easily as the silent blood pumping in her veins, 60 beats per minute.

Open my eyes

the daylight

A little close

How my day goes

See the liitle shine

Ignore the sign

Hating the time

Then live that life

Using my timer

Should I see her

Do you peek on my dream

I'm hanging in there

I'm so tired

Thinking why

Can't even walk

I started to choke

Manage my wake

For my own hate

Living for that date

For my own sake

I will keep on hold...

open your eyes.

it may be dark out

and maybe

you can’t even see a difference

between the backs of your eyelids

and the whole wide world

but open your eyes.

the sun will come up

it’s just a matter of time

before light is spread

and darkness only lingers in shadows.

open your eyes

don’t waste time

living on autopilot

open your eyes

and look around

open your eyes

and share what you see

the beauty found

that comes from contrast

the sun may not stay up forever

but the sun will always

rise again.

so open your eyes

and look for the sunrise.

open your eyes

and live.

Inspiration is something that cuts through your heart. It changes your state of mind, sadness to happiness. You smile just thinking of it. It ignites a spark that:- takes tiredness away, enhances creativity ( Ideas dwell my mind and I write).

For something to inspire me, I need to believe in it. I believe in the innocence of plants and animals.

AN OLD TREE

We had an old tree in front of our house. They called it dead, but, I have had faith that it can grow green anytime soon.

The tree is artistically beautiful, the intricate cut of its branches. Its tiny, dark wooden fingers. It stood there with open arms, like a naked man, giving envy to Michelangelo's David.

Summer afternoons filled its branches with birds, even though there were no leaves on it. It hosts many plants growing at its feet.

People in the neighbourhood wanted it gone. They had many superstitions regarding the presence of a dead object close to them. Some even thought that the tree can fall at any time and damage their car or property.

For decades, it provided shade to birds, cars, people...

But, who cares, now that it seems dead. Ungrateful load on earth.

I fought with them on several occasions. I was reprimanded by my parents for not behaving appropriately. People even said that I had lost my mind.

Whenever I looked at the tree, I felt calm and serene.

What I could see in it, they couldn't see, pure inspiration.