How dark the evening with no moon, the dark before the dawn. I did the early morning candle and music thing, as close as I come to meditating. I had to turn the light on in the bathroom though because of the spider, the one in the sink last night so big it didn’t look real. A gag spider. But now it had crept off somewhere, wherever spiders go, folding itself up or hiding in the drain. I tried to put myself in the mind of the spider as I sat on the sofa with my coffee. Tried to see and think like it would, all those legs and eyes. The view from the bottom of a hand sink bowl, like being on a glacier or inside the mouth of a volcano. I ambled up the rim and looked down at the toilet, picked the best route. Let out some line and belayed myself down. A good spot to camp by the toilet brush, above the plastic retainer. Gave the lead line a tug to make sure it was anchored, let out strand #2, started spinning. Pulled out the thread with my hind legs, comes out liquidy at first but soon hardens.

The area behind a toilet bowl is a bleak place to be but good if you want to go unnoticed, so I hung there telling myself that for what seemed like a very long time. Fangs folded in, my gut hanging out. And thought, if the bristles on my legs were made for combing out silk maybe they could coax out a note or two from these strings.

And with that thought I imagined I could rub the strings to produce a low cello thrum, and got to doing so with one at first, then another, and another…and tried to remember that Bach sonata for violin in G Minor.

Remarkable what can come out of you if you just trust. The imagination wants to build things. Anchor a lead line, lasso out the rest.

Categories: inspiration, writing

Tags: inspiration, short form, stream-of-consciousness