Inspired by an Unposted Two-Year-Old Bit, But for How Long Will Inspiration Last?

     It's 12/31/2020, a "terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad" year, to quote Judith Viorst, that 99.99 percent of the world is relieved to see end. I sat down at my computer to check texts and emails, then decided I should write that post for our travel blog I've been sorting photos for, then thought, you know, you should take a stab at writing something in your essay blog. 

    Apparently I last had that idea on 12/19/2018, but never finished the post. It's actually okay. It's short. I tweeked it just a bit. Tweeking has always been one of the big inhibitors of my writing...among others, but I won't go into that, or the post will more than likely remain unposted as I get lost in revisions and additions then leave it to finish for another day—or year or two. 

    Herewith the two-year-old post, and perhaps next, a current one. 

     So we're putting on our Christmas card that we love for people to follow our travel blog. Then I wonder should I refer them to my essay and poetry blogs, too? Yes. But no, takes up too much room on a card we're trying to keep short and sweet. The rest of it is notes of our kids' professions, with a comment that they are stupendous in other ways, too, of course.
      I've discovered that I haven't posted to Riddle's Glenn in four years, when I celebrated having made it a year past my traumatic cervical spine surgery. There is some good reading. There are some valid thoughts, in my humble opinion. 
     I was listening to City Arts and Lectures on NPR station KQED out of San Francisco yesterday and my psyche perked up when I heard the interviewee, poet Eileen Myles say, and I paraphrase, "A poem is like a party. The poems on the page are the people at the party." That was it! That would inspire me to write!
     I did write a couple of poems last spring, when a friend's wife died within a matter of weeks of a diagnosis of lung cancer. You can read one of them at PoetryUntethered.blogspot.com.
     And last fall after my granddaughter wanted me to teach her to crochet I began a poem. She sat incredibly patiently, for twenty minutes or so, while I guided her four-and-a-half-year-old hands with mine. When she wanted to try it herself, she did not protest when my hands stepped in when hers couldn't quite pull the loops through the tunnel, over the bridge, and back under the bridge. Recalling the minutes still tears at my heart.

My granddaughter, now 7, and me.

     Do you know what I mean? We have expressions like "fills my heart," "tears at my heartstrings," "with all my heart" (I like the French "of all my heart" better). But none of that captures that sensation that your heart literally is the master of your mind, body, and soul, that searing that you feel not just in your chest but in your head, like a fiery waterfall, or a a flower blooming in a time lapse film.
      So I was wondering, when will I be brave enough to write even when something isn't causing part of me to burn or being shockingly inspired?