Melissa A. Bartell » Distilled Moments

Wanted: One Muse

Melissa — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 05:22:10 +0000

You should keep a regular schedule, not visit with your pouch of creative glitter at three in the morning, and then spend a week sipping margaritas on some tropical shore while I stab pens through paper in fruitless attempts to find coherence.

You should be funny, but laughing only with me and never at me. You should be prepared to offer mugs of hot coffee or glasses of cold tea, as necessary, and you should be certain never to let me feel discouraged, even when I write something that patently sucks.

You should be maternal, cajoling and nagging, but also cheering me on, loudly.

Oh, right, and you shouldn’t cost me a cent.

Aqueous

Melissa — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 05:19:41 +0000

Sunday afternoon found me jumping into the deep end of the pool rather than mincing into the water, step by step from the shallows. Cool liquid enveloped me, and I was suddenly a mermaid, splashing and frolicking with innocent delight.

Green and blue foam “noodles,” the aquatic colors matching the stripes in my swimsuit, were my toys, alternately forming an ersatz raft, or a free-floating obstacle course.

I floated on breeze-created waves with my eyes closed, later opening them to sudden disorientation caused by the leafy canopy of the trees, and higher up, the beginnings of a mackerel sky.

Argiope

Melissa — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 05:17:12 +0000

She arrived about a month ago, and set up home between two trees, near the fence. At first, she frightened me, but then I grew to appreciate her presence. What more appropriate back yard guest for a writer, than a writing spider?

Yesterday, she’d moved her web away from the shelter of the trees, perhaps to improve her tan, or catch a juicer form of insect.

Today, I walked out to see her, and the web is gone, but for a single strand. I am strangely bereft, and the yard seems lifeless. Birds and buzzing things don’t fill her gap.