A Fist Full of Sand

It's a strange thing to go hunting for inspiration on the days when you feel like you should write, but the everyday objects that surround you wither when you stare at them, begging them to be interesting for the moment so that you might be able to squeeze a sentence or two out onto the page.

I've never been deep sea diving among shipwrecks, but for all I can imagine it to be, I imagine that hunting for inspiration must be a little bit the same. Starting sentences feels like what it feels like to pull on a wetsuit, the scrrrmp scrrrrmp sound it makes as you squeak it over your knees, like that initial awkward and unattractive struggle of making vague ideas fit into verbs and nouns and adjectives. Committing to a passage is the moment you jump into the cold water. Then you dive deep to find meaning, pulling yourself further and further down, sometimes into complete darkness, and resurface with a grasped idea.

All too often I just come back up with a fist full of sand.

* * *

There are helicopters circling above us now, the rackety-rackety-rackety sound of them swooping and diving between the skyscrapers of midtown. Sometimes it seems like there are always helicopters above us, sirens below, like this city is in a constant and self-imposed state of emergency. I imagine various organs in protective casings flying above our heads, or policemen with binoculars following an escaped prisoner (wearing stripes and a ski mask? carrying a canvas bag emblazoned with a dollar sign?) up 59th street. Maybe these metal dragonflies above our heads are all full of tourists oohing and ahing at the rooftops and straight, darting lines of the avenues disappearing into the horizon. Or documentarians wielding cameras, clinging to a strap, leaning out of the door, maybe even in the curve of their lens capturing me sitting here at my window, typing about them.

Sometimes the omnipresent, everyday aspects of our life become so obvious you can't help but write them into words. I'm paying attention, helicopters. No need to shout. I'm writing you down.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.