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The things you learn on a walk

 There are times when my writing Muse is sleeping; tucked in some tiny hidey-hole in the library section of my subconscious and oblivious to calls from the keyboard, it wiles away its time with sudoku -or whatever they have in there- instead of responding to my pleas. So, at times like these, bereft of any ideas I haven’t already used, the choices for me are slim: either indulge in needless food, or go for a lonely walk in the forest pretending it is actually forest bathing –shinrin yoku I think the Japanese call it.

Walking seems to be the balm of churning, troubled minds, but it sometimes works for empty ones like mine as well. At any rate, I figured I had nothing to lose. Well, actually it was cold and raining outside, so I suppose I had a choice, but a quick check of the empty fridge sent me for my umbrella; in a Museless world, anything trumps nothing, I suppose.

But even enmeshed in the dripping arms of the forest, I found it hard to shake the idea that, like a profligate son, I had squandered those ideas I had written about and was trying to reap an empty field. The thought occurred to me that I had been condemned instead to live the grasshopper’s fate in Aesop’s fable, begging the ant for sustenance, because I had squandered my ideas instead of caching some of them away for lean times.

I wandered lonely as a cloud under the sopping leaves, no longer trying to avoid the muddy puddles that were slowly coating the trail, no longer daring to believe that inspiration might lurk behind a sodden bush, or whisper from a dripping branch. The Muse was not hiding in the woods today, I thought as I slogged through a tiny field whose long grass was bent and battered by the rain. Only one thing stood, waving drunkenly at me in the wind, although I could tell that it, too, was close to yielding to the storm.

I live in a land of impediments; the pasture behind my house is burdock-rich. It would have played havoc with the sheep I used to keep if it had been their fleeces that I was harvesting rather than their… Okay, I’ll admit it.. their meat. At any rate, the bedraggled plant I was staring at in the little clearing was a burdock, its remaining stock of velcrotic attachments weighed down in the rain: each of its several branches still clutched multiple unspent and presumably useless burrs that it had saved over the summer, thinking they might prove valuable procreative tools one day. But no animal had brushed past, and the long days of summer with its wealth of visitors had disappeared. Only a chilly autumn and a barren winter remained. And now it had to bear the added weight with little chance of reward.

Aesop’s ant writ large: the burdock had saved its summer treasure, its only earnings, but for what? Was this my Muse enshrubbed? Had it finally roused itself to play a game to confuse me even more? Or was there a moral in this somewhere -a lesson to be learned?

I stood there for a moment thinking about it, the rain in the little clearing drumming on my umbrella like a tabla. I felt there was a message being conveyed, but as usual, my Muse would never be content to present a fully-formed idea; I would have to leave it lying fallow for a while until it matured.

Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket and I tried valiantly in the wind to switch the umbrella to my other hand to answer it. But it scudded across the swampy field and by the time I’d retrieved it, I was as wet as the long grass I’d had to negotiate and I was in no mood to answer the phone. The screen said it was Jana however, so I thought it would be better to answer now, rather than endure her endless questions later.

“It’s Jana,” she said as soon as I opened the line, although she was perfectly aware that I already knew that. She was like that, though; she needed to be clear about things. “What’s that sound…? You walking in the rain again, G?”

I sighed; if I didn’t explain why I was out in the rain, she’d hound me until I did. “I was just working through an idea for an essay…” I knew I shouldn’t end with an ellipsis -not with Jana.

“What’s your idea, G? Another bus story? Or are you going to try to write about the coffee guys at the Food Court again…?”

She used her ellipses like the leash on her dog when she didn’t want it to pee in front of people on a walk, and yet understood it was the sole purpose of her taking the dog out.

I sighed loudly enough to drown out the rain pounding on the umbrella, but it was no use.

“S’matter, G? Your idea even more predictable than that?”

I don’t think Jana had a Muse, frankly. She preferred reading to writing; a library card to a MacBook Air. But she was the only one who would listened to my travails, so I merely shrugged silently; she couldn’t ask me about a shrug she didn’t hear. “Well, it’s an unusual idea, and certainly not a predictable one…”

“Try me…”

Another sigh escaped me while I was thinking about how to explain, and I could hear her echo the sigh through her phone. “Tell me what you think. I’ve just seen a burdock that still has all its burrs… And it looked so forlorn it made me sad.”

“So?” She was quick to interrupt. “I hate them, G! I’m glad this one wasn’t able to distribute its load.”

I sighed -reflexively this time; Jana had the imagination of a rock. “I was struck by its dilemma! Remember Aesop’s fable about the ant turning away the grasshopper who begged it for food because the wastrel had squandered the wealth of summer by playing, or something? The ant, of course, had saved its supplies for winter.”

I could hear her breathe impatiently. “So…?”

“Well, the burdock saved it’s burrs didn’t it?”

“Let me say it again, G: so…?”

“So, maybe there’s a middle ground or something. You know, all work and no play makes the burdock a dull plant.”

Jana unleashed a rare chuckled at that. “Interesting parallel, G…” She actually sounded interested in the idea when I put it like that. “How’re you going to work it into an essay? Don’t put those coffee guys in it again though, eh?”

I was silent for a moment, thinking about it. Sometimes the Muse arrives when I least expect it. “Okay…” I started. “Actually, I was thinking of involving you. You know, about how you often phone me just when I need a way of working my way through a problem… Giving me ideas, I mean.”

“Sort of an au moment critique kind of thing you mean?” Jana reads a lot of French philosophy, I think.

I smiled. “I suppose… You busy tonight?”

She snortled at that. “Thought you’d never ask, G.”

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