The unobtainable

Inspiration isn't simple for me. It must be obtained from the unobtainable. My life is not an exciting one, so I must make do with what I have and savor the stranger moments. I come from the strong opinion that good tales come from feeling, not the actual events. That's how most things work out for me. Emotions; the keystone to literary intrigue that few bother to mention. No matter the adventures in life, the telling (and perhaps the doing) of them will remain tasteless without their ultimate components, the "in the moment" experience. No matter how mundane many things seem, the complicated emotions captured in these moments is what creates great pieces of writing. I believe writing (well at least) is more of a meditative exercise than a creative skill. To understand an intriguing situation to the fullest, the people, things, and inner world must be observed to their microscopic details. Feelings are more than the standard anger, sadness, boredom, or happiness. Each moment of emotion is a complex alloy of many factors. The inner world is a fluid place. Certain variants of an emotion may never be felt again after their brief presence in the mind. Many others might be so unique to the individual that trying to describe them would be like trying to describe flavor to a person with no taste buds.

Any ill fated attempts to understand ones emotions at the highest degree is a frustratingly inspirational task. This curious phenomena is what motivates me to write. To describe pieces of my inner world is something I aspire to explore to the best of my abilities. It's an aimless task, one hundred percent chance of ending in failure. No matter the effort, the genuine states of an individuals mind cannot be experienced through writing. Despite this, I write on.

This path of mine is more of a realm kept well tread rather than well understood. The best times for writing are fresh out of a rare moment. Those times when something felt much different. Anything that catches my attention is fair game for a story's base ingredients. The story itself doesn't have to do anything with the events that conjured those emotions in the first place. To get to the ends is the goal, no matter the means.

Last night I had a dream that both stumped and pleased me. I was walking around in a book store that had some sort of local writers convention going on. A stand with several neat piles of beige colored booklets caught my eye. Upon taking a closer look I couldn't believe what I was seeing. They where vintage poetry anthologies. I liked a few of the passages I skimmed through, but that wasn't the interesting part. Each page and cover popped with outsider illustrations. They looked like a warped hybrid of The Far Side and All Tomorrows. Precise stippling, bold pen lines, cartoonish animal grins, twisted creatures, it was all there on the old pages. Fifteen dollars a book, the lime green laminated sheet of paper on the stand made this clear. They were fifteen dollars despite the original six dollars and fifty cents printed on the upper right hand of the covers. I was going to buy one nonetheless.

I could see everything, as clear as the bright florescent lights above allowed. Bears, lizards, snarls, tongues, toothy smiles, the numerous beasts, they all stood there, a family photo pose, their simple forms carved from harsh shading. This is rare for my dreams. Crisp vision is uncommon, perhaps more of a fluke in the sleep realm. Of course, a third of me knew it wasn't real, but the other two thirds wanted to verify their existence. I stared at those covers for a long time. It all stayed put until it didn't. My spirits withered for every second a facial expression or character changed in the blink of an eye. The lines changed, but their clarity remained intact. The idea of them stayed too, a book of perpetual play, a drawing style that would fascinate me enough to emulate it, a perfect textual-artistic layout for the all books I'd wanted to write. I wanted to bring it home. They were thin but not crumpled from age. This satisfied me. Several could fit in my small bag. They were not heavy. I could marvel at their strange nature at my desk and read the times new roman between the curious drawings. Deciding whether to buy two, one, or three, kept me mulling over in that store for a while. The wallet never came to my hand.

I'm still convinced I purchased one. If not, I'd be disregarding my own work. Little did I know at that store, I was looking at a grand design of my sub conscious. I'd been hashing through non workable illustration ideas for months and some inner depths had already done it for me. Then everything went away. I couldn't even pull a piece of it out. Every page of those books will forever be lost, no matter the intricacy of their design. All I can do is create from a shadow of a memory. It's enough for me. The experience is the keystone, the indescribable. It's explaining the unexplainable, or rather showing it.