Capriciousness

I’m not supposed to be writing now. I should be working hard at something else. Words, however, insist on trespassing into my head and splaying their long, unwieldy limbs across the litter-strewn table. Surely you know how stubborn they can be? When they have nothing to say and must still force themselves forward recklessly, clamoring to be heard like a precocious child. You try to ignore them, but they will not listen to your meek entreaties- they know you’re tractable, that your weak arguments are a façade.

So they flow forth and flood your clean, pristine sheet of paper that has long been waiting to be scribbled upon. It wasn’t originally set down for your blather, and has patiently awaited the fruit of your serious introspection. Capricious that words are, they will flow with cheerful anachronism, making themselves heard just when you don’t want them to- not whole-heartedly. But depend on it, when you want to write with such desperation that existence itself seems to hinge on it, they will dry up, clam up, go back into their shell like they never existed.

Maybe that is how words are supposed to be. Magical and unpredictable. Springing from the most unlikely sources and impulses, breathing life into dangerously mundane subjects. Call me a featherhead, but to me, words are close to the most beautiful creation of man.