All photos and content © Tanya Anguita.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Missing: Muse. If found, please return to ....


Missing: Muse
If found, please return to ... 
She misses her.
Thank you.


I have a confession to make.  I've lost my Muse again. If you find her, will you please return her? 
 
Actually, if I’m being really honest, and I’m loathe to admit this, my Muse walked out on me about a month ago in a fit of pique and disgust.

Words won't come to me any more, and I don't have the focus that I need to go on a daily wild-goose-chase down the blank page to find them. When I try to write, they laugh at me or play hide and seek until I’m throwing my hands up in despair and walking away from the pen or keyboard.

You see, my muse and I had this piece that we’d spent the better part of a year working on; a piece on the power of words.  Ironic, no?  It felt like one of the better things we'd written together. Late one afternoon in early May, I went in to refine it again, adding missing pieces and cutting away the chaff, when one click did the wrong thing and an auto save by fecking blogger meant that the piece was lost forever.

I stood there in panicked shock; so distressed, so completely heartbroken, that I quite literally thought I was going to be ill.  I had the awful adrenal rush that starts at the top of the head and feels like someone is pouring molten lava from the top of your head, down your shoulders and across your chest and back, and I felt sick.

This is not hyperbole.

I was as nauseous and felt as betrayed as if I'd just walked in on my lover in bed with a close friend.  Betrayed, bereft, hurt, panicked, nauseous, and angry at myself for not seeing it earlier.  

Only in this case, I was the one wholly in the wrong for not practicing safe writing. I’d put my Muse at risk, and I still had to confess it to her.  

When I did she looked like she'd been slapped.  She stood there with tears in her eyes, shook her head quietly, turned around and walked right out the door, slamming it as she stalked away without looking back.  I watched her in stunned disbelief as she disappeared from view.

I have to confess that I drunk dialed her one night. She didn't answer.  I tried calling a week later, but she’d changed her number.  I even tried writing to her, but irony of ironies, it is hard to write a good entreaty without your Muse to help you. 

There is an emptiness where she used to be.  I’m so lonely for her that I don’t quite know what to do. She's changed her address, cut all ties and I'm quite simply lost without her.

Have I learned my lesson, you ask?  Yes! Oh All the Gods YES!  I'm writing this in Word even as I type and hitting “Save” every few seconds.

Did I have a draft elsewhere, you ask?  Well yes, but one that I hadn't updated since last August, which somehow makes me feel sicker still, because it is proof that I wasn't smart enough to continue to back it up after that.  The draft is a version of the piece in its infancy.  It is unpolished, missing salient points, undeveloped; just the bones of the idea with no flesh on it.  It haunts me.  I know I need to finish it. I just don’t know how, or where to start again.  I want to finish the piece.  I must.  I just don’t know how to re-create it, and I am at a loss for how to create it anew.

So I ask you, how do I win my Muse back? How do I woo her and show her my dedication, focus, and love?  How do I convince her that it won’t happen again? How do I beg for her forgiveness in a way that lets her know that I value her, appreciate her, respect her?  How do I prove that I’ve learned my lesson?  

Because truth be told, I’m pining away for her.  I am at a loss without her.  I need her whisperings in my ear.  I miss her voice in my soul in a way that is almost impossible to explain without, oh sweet irony, her here helping me to craft the words to do so. 

Until I can sort it out, I think I’ll start but putting up signs around the neighborhood.  They will simply say:

Missing: Muse
If found, please return to ... 
She misses her.
Thank you.

I wonder if it will work.  I sure hope so.

Wish me luck.

© Tanya Anguita 

4 comments:

  1. Heh.. would you look at that... it would seem, at least to me, that by talking about her, she returned and you didn't even know it. You just wrote brilliantly. Every moment of the actions and conversations were conveyed in your writing. I saw her.. she was standing behind you, right at that moment, holding your hands as you typed.. as a father would hold his son's hand while holding a bat for the first time. She may not always be there when you are looking, but I am pretty sure that she is acting like a parent.. who is helping their child ride a bike for the very first time without training wheels. They hold on tightly at first.. both hands with fear that you are about to fall, and they walk beside you as you build up speed. And then... they start to run, and while they do, they push you a little harder, only able to hold on to the back of the seat with one hand, until finally, they let go completely when you least expect it.. and you ride off on your own screaming: "I'M DOING IT!!! ALL BY MYSELF!!!" She is still around... I just saw her take one hand off of your seat.

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  2. Thank you so much, Glen. Truly. Such a great way to put that, so much kindness in your words, and such a great reminder. Huge hugs!

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  3. Exactly the same thing happened to me. A long blog, much work, lost by blogspot. That stunned feeling, the remorse, even shame that runs through me at a time like that is so painful that I can hardly bear it. I think it's the pain that makes it hard to recover your muse. You have to experience it anew each time you think of it and your innermost being shies away, "No! Not again! I can't feel that pain!" But what you've done here, to my great admiration, is walking through the pain instead of shying away from it. It lances the dark and sodden mass and lets some of it get out. It's recovery. Good for you. I'm Patrick and I'm a recovering non-backuper.

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  4. I'm sorry to hear that the same thing happened to you. For me it hasn't been a shying away from the pain of losing something again...it has been about the loss of something that I cherished coupled with too much on my personal plate. Movement forward = yay! :)

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