How to Lose the Game of Love in Three Moves or Less

Life is short. But not pointless.

So is this entry.

Wanted: Muse (apply inside)

I'm facing a blank page. White and static, it stares right back at me with unflinching indifference. It's a Sunday afternoon and it's as if time flows like thick, syrupy muck through a funnel. The room rotates in Matrix fashion and you notice things you don't normally see without a writer's block of this magnitude.

It gets to you, you know? When you should be creating worlds, spining tales or imagining romance, you instead find yourself sitting in an uncomfortable computer chair at 12:36 on a Sunday afernoon brimming with excitement out of an idea you cannot articulate. It stays locked tight in a brain that won't budge and a body that would not cooperate. An artist once said to me, "Inspiration is a bullshit word. What you should use is 'vision'. To inspire is to breathe... we all breathe. But vision? That is a gift." I haven't really given much thought to what it meant. But now it's strange that I should remember those words.

I think to myself, if vision is a gift, then do I wait for someone to give it to me? Do I search it out? Who gives away these gifts? And is it possible to ask for more? The Greeks used to invoke the aid of Muses, the water nymphs of the arts, should I? And how do I, in the world of plausible reality, do that? Do I make one up or do I already have one?

It is like torture in the medieval sense. I so desperately want to shout "eureka!" in perfect intonation and cinematic flair for that one single moment of enlightenment and spark of action. If vision is indeed a gift, then boy, that package must have gotten lost in the mail. How do I begin without it? Where is the purported Muse who sits by your side, she who motivates you to creation?

Some say it hits you like a suplex. It blindsides you. And just when you think you've gotten a good look, it surprises you with more. I want that. A friend told me yesterday, "We all know what you want, just go and get it." She was referring to french fries of course, or something... Well, I should, shouldn't I? I don't have the luxury of time to wait for the vision to arrive.

My Muse is whoever I want her to be. And if I continue staring at this stupid blank screen when it should contain black squiggles of prose, then time would render all these things unnecesary. Then what would happen?

I look around the room, beside the uncomfortable computer chair. I see something and it reminds me. The Muse. Maybe the gift of vision is not what one needs to get one started. Maybe all I need is the hope and reassurance that it is on its way, held tightly by a Greek goddess in a flowing white gown. I can see her now, climbing up the stairs, past my siblings' and parents' rooms. Her hair flows like a beautiful violin symphony, and her radiance illuminates the dark hallway. She moves out and about outside my door, she hesitates for a while to knock. The package rumbles a bit beneath her skin of resplendent silk. She smiles.

I hear a knock on the door. I open it slowly. There is no one there.