I had sat there in quiet contemplation while my fellow creative writing students worked with what bits of inspiration were playing across their minds. We were supposed to have been drawing upon our memories of days gone by to form lists of possibilities from which we were to write some muse-driven, brilliantly uninspired, or at least reasonably passable bit of a manuscript that would be due at the beginning of our next session. Sadly, as I stared at the pencil gripped tightly between my immobile fingertips, I could dredge precious little from the muck of my own mind.
Unlike those studious individuals around me, my own memories seemed to rest quite peacefully under mountains of thick dust, fragmented with age and well hidden. I generally prefer to regard them as the gems of my existence cloaked in the dust of days. As such, I have often found myself going on great mental expeditions with my hammers and chisels always at the ready, but only coming home with the moldy and broken remains of what once might have been a remarkable experience.
With pen and paper or monitor and keyboard I can usually set about the arduous task of reviving those splintered moments, so carefully exhumed. I can even work tirelessly on its creation, like one of those tiny, industrious ants that march ever on in its role as hunter and gatherer. But, alas, once a manuscript made of such bother and fuss has finally reached completion, I always discover it bears more of a resemblance to fiction than fact. The facts are so few and so fragmented by disuse that I tend to resort, without realizing it, to coating them with the glue of an all too eager imagination. So it has played out on many a day, and this one was no different.
As part of the grand project we, my few fellow writers and I, had banded together to discuss what we had included on our lists, those semi-random memories we each were considering cornering for the piece. Glancing at my pitifully white paper, I realized with a twinge of guilt, that my list seemed more than a little half-starved. Poor thing. I forced a smile as I focused on the two unlucky ladies I had been thrust upon. As we sat looking from one to another, our collective silence screamed so loudly that our instructor had almost immediately voiced his second thoughts at our grouping.
Rather than be separated into just as uneasy another grouping, I launched into some sort of a ramble that I am quite glad to have already had buried in the very back edge of my memory. The ploy had worked of course, and our three member cluster of mad sprites had been able to drive past the gate keeper and on into the forest of our own personal yores. From those dark spaces of memories flecked with silvery light we emerged mostly unscathed, I, the Lady Bones and the Timorous Pixie.
The details of my own doings that day are, as always, almost entirely lost to me, but oh the stories I could write from the memories of my momentary companions. Perhaps one day I will pull their tales from the best kept and best stocked shelves of my mind. They are there with millions of others, all fantastic legends just waiting to be born of a mind that is so well lit with the vibrant violet flames of imagination. Perhaps one day I will make room for my own memories here, my own terrific tales, but for now the shadows and dust of the pits of time can keep them and their mundane truths.
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