Write

"Write," the muse tells me.

I, glancing sideways, don't listen.

"Write," she commands.

"And what could I write?" I say. "Hasn't my spirit been withered, and my inspiration lost to your songs?"

"It's just that I look, and there are so many things that want to be written, but so little willingness to listen to them. The realities of the world rule our attention so, and they stir up the noise of our minds. Saint John cried out in the desert, where only the locusts understood his magic."

My eyebrow is already rising in delirium as I look, and I hear the noise of my mind, which has risen up.

Ah, noise. No, I don't want to write noise. There's too much already.

"You used to help me, you used to tell me what to write. Now you just watch me, lurking." I look down, head bowed.

"No, I don't mind not being heard. In fact, I want whatever comes from my hand to be so rawly honest that no one in their right mind would want to hear it. I no longer want to write about the stars that twinkle in their colorful heights, the ones you once told me so much about. I want to write about how intense the night is for man, how hard it is not to react like a spoiled child to the headlong flow of life, how raw loneliness is..."

I fall silent, as if to contemplate the drama my words invoke.

"Well, like that, but more honest." As I say this, I look toward what honesty means to me.

Yes, life has its rawness. The night weighs its share, and the society that represents me is madly split into factions.

But while there is life, this gift here is undeniable.

If I look with total, raw honesty, I can't help but recognize the quantum miracle of my existence, so much so that everything it unfolds loses its validity.

"Yes, I will write about the ineffable gratitude my soul eternally feels for the manifestation of the universe," I exclaim. "I will tell the world of the mastery of silence, of the majestic presence that illuminates the eye that sees everything without judging, that accepts life with pure, untouched gratitude."

I fall silent again to listen to myself.

"Yes, I'm aware of your lurking gaze. It's all right."

Then I look toward those lush stars my muse once told me so much about.

And for the first time, I am silent.

"I will write about those unknown worlds that twinkle above us. I will write about wanderers who lose themselves to find themselves, about fairies who dine alongside rebel messiahs, prostitutes and tax collectors."

"But since you no longer tell me about those distant times, I will go and visit them myself."

"And yes, I'll heed your lurking gaze. Writing won't be only about what I happen to overhear. To write, I'll have to go and live in my own flesh the adventures that breathe out knowledge. My life will be spent roaming fields and savannas to express the freshness of life that still comforts the spoiled child who lives in us, as much as the valleys and ravines that strengthen the Father who is aware of his role in life. And to bring that forth by my own hand."

"I will write about my silence. But for that, I give my life to doing it."

I look, and I hear nothing but silence.