I don't believe in absolutes, but the only constant is change.

A good friend and fellow writer bought me The Pocket Muse 2, by Monica Wood, for my birthday. Each page is dedicated to something a writer can use to shake up, inspire or alter entirely his or her writing. Thus, I've decided to rededicate my blog to following the Muse daily, completing each assignment from cover-to-cover. I'll probably sneak in an update on my life now and then, but at least this way, I'll likely do it with more of my old (or new!) writing flair.

Without further ado...

Open an imaginary door. What do you see?

The door creaks open with a slow, repulsive resistance that sounds like all the horror movie expositions. You know the sound-- it's when the stupid heroine follows the bloody trail into a dark alleyway that leads to a single black door, forcing her to either turn back now and save herself or to keep forging ahead because her also-stupid boyfriend ran headlong into the fray in a burst of sheer masculinity (as if we didn't know he was tough already).

This door is different, however. If the heroine were to step inside, she wouldn't be assaulted by her newly-transformed lover. She'd see a world lit by blackened, wrought-iron sconces instead of street lights. She'd see a cobble-stoned path lined with neatly-trimmed shrubberies and inviting wooden benches spotted with smiling men and women and children, all wearing nice 18th century clothing.

She would realize that the door wasn't creaking with the Hollywood scare-tactic screeching that usually means imminent death or a long, suspenseful jogging sequence. It was creaking because the hinges were aged and our popular door greases don't exist in this world.

If she walked further down the path, she would smell the heavy scents of truly rural America -- long grasses, Evergreens, dust in the air -- but with something more. Instead of cologne and expensive perfumes emanating from the people-lined benches, the heroine would smell their joys and sorrows. Each person would share his or her life through the woman's olfactory senses, allowing her to interpret every nuance in its purest form.

One woman's essence would imprint a story of anguish on the heroine. Her husband, though sitting next to her, is planning to leave her to spare their family from his alcoholism.

A few benches down, another man's musky pheremones would send the heroine reeling from all the sins of the flesh that he had committed just one year ago, despite having just purchased a ring for his betrothed.

The bench people's presence would continue to infiltrate the heroine's scent recognition, allowing her to be made aware of their most private secrets, uninterrupted by sound or sight. Their rhetoric would still be masked by their immobility and their stoic uniformity, removing the heroine from that which makes us innately human-- having to interpret the world with the clogging-up of another human's influence.

If the heroine continued along the path, the benches she passed would inevitably become devoid of the statuesque chemical storybooks. She would be alone to process the information she had gathered from all of those perfect strangers, turning the cruelties and the pleasures around and around in her head, letting them mesh together to form a a conclusion that, in this world, the boundaries of pleasure and pain are married and that she alone could avoid becoming another frozen heartache or paralyzed gleeful romantic if she just kept walking, protecting her secret.

And then the door would slam shut behind her with a terrible clang. If she turned to run, she would know that the smell of those people would start to overrun her thoughts again, threatening to dismantle her carefully-constructed defense against this world.

Careful to control her emotions, she will instead walk forever along the cobble-stoned path, disallowing herself to sit and rest lest she become one of the sad majority, locked inside herself in a world that collects the self-absorbed.


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Tell me what you think!