Maybe writing from my iPad will magically inspire me to write. While sitting here watching words appear on this glowing obsidian slab is a delight, it is still a wonder which I have anticipated. The tools are a convenience, not story engines. When I dip into some new app or device, I feel like I’ve taken hold of a magic sword. Now anything is possible, I think. But the sword does not know how to sing without me.

Lately I have been devising strategies to trick myself into creating something. I come up with various exercises, low commitment stunt projects, fire and forget one offs. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.

But I still must return to the font, which now wheezes and gasps a faint mist (or is it now sand?). In my ponderings of what may have happened to my creative fire I have drawn a correlation to having become less crazy. The unspoken agreement has worked too well and the safe harbor from the storms of my mind has become a home. From this vantage point I observed much, my world held before me in a snow globe, regarded with clear eyes.

I have spent much of my life in fear of various measuring sticks. I always felt I was getting it wrong, that I was found wanting. This permeated all spheres of human interaction. But at the core was the feeling of failing at reality, of a diamond hard superstructure crushing what I felt was real. Now that I see that there is only a reality of consensus, a ridiculous web of dependent causality governing behavior, I wonder if there is anything left to fear.

I do not think it is healthy for me to be sane. It is a survival trait necessary for the muggle world, but I fear it may be a cancer of the spirit.