Writing Muses - Part One

Road kill. It stinks, it's disgusting, it assaults the emotions as well as the brain. I ride my bicycle (27 years old and counting), ten miles into work each day. My Mp3 player keeps me in a constant state of muse heaven the entire trip.

My muses have reserved various points along the way with little 'death markers'. There's the on-its-lifeless-back-armadillo marker followed by the rotting-fox section of highway a half mile later followed by the everything-squashed-flat-but-my-bushy-tail-squirrel memorial a quarter mile further. All these wonderful brain-jarring, nose-assaulting, sad witnesses to life's crueler side appear in the final two miles of the ride.

I mentally steel myself as I approach, sometimes refusing to look, other times far too curious for the brunch I have usually just consumed before my trek. The connection to the muses is that death pervades my writing often. This fact may not always be apparent to the reader, but an underlying sense of sadness, melancholy or downright depression weaves its way often through pieces I write.

On my ride, my moods whack and whale at my soon-to-be 52 year-old sensibilities, begging me to return emotional control over to that youthful chap who allowed his emotions to rule inside himself if not outside. I used to thrill at absorbing a great tune while wind ripped at my earphones and leaves scurried for my front tire's satisfying crunch. Now, I feel myself holding back, reigning in the delirium of music in tune with nature in tune with my body exercising in tune with the positive endorphins rolling through my system.

This is not to say I don't enjoy and revel in the combination of music and exercise. I just struggle to achieve the exhilaration that once came without bidding, without thought and without judgment.

Autumn always sees me missing the mountains of my youth, crackling leaves on crisp windy days, the promise of a snowy winter after the brilliant colors of fall and hot chocolate once I reluctantly head back indoors. Florida offers none of these 'favorite things'.

I empathize with these roadkill animals. Emotionally, at times I feel like road kill on the highway of life, unable to change my direction from trajectories in place from years and even decades past. Yes, I still live and breath, but I feel immobilized by circumstance.

Here's where the muses come in. They revive my passions. They motivate my fingers. They spark my brain and launch my dreams. The sense that I can accomplish anything I set my mind and heart to rolls through my soul like soft lapping waves on a northern lake. I know, yes, I know in my gut the only person left to hold me back is truly myself.

I think about things like this as I greet death by the road each day. These unfortunate creatures who assault our senses and cause us discomfort in this life still have the power to affect things in this world, like me and you, and they are dead.

My muses whisper those tantalizing, silken, siren teasers, "but you, you're still alive. You, you're able to communicate and performs and achieve and reach out and stretch and breathe and impact and motivate and inspire and console and love and, yes, find your way back to who and what and where you love.

God, I love my muses. I love Mike's Moods. They may appear crazy to others, but they soothe and console and inspire me to be more than I ever dreamed I could. This autumn I'll be exploring Mike's Moods and how they affect what I write, how I write and even when I write.

I plan to review aspects of the writing moods I experience and translate them to articles online for other writers who may benefit by at least knowing they are not the only somewhat emotionally out of kilter folk wading through our oxygen-laden planet. The drive to move forward as a writer must possess fuel - some force to propel the mind to pursue something abstract, pleasing, disturbing and confusing - a writer's life.

This may just be something that "Tiggers" do best...