Hope, and Ispirational Crossdressing
I don’t know if you could call me an optimist or not. I’m pretty clear on the risks involved in reality…and most days my feet are firmly rooted in the red soil of this strange little island in the sea. It would take stronger than gale force winds to sway me (depending, of course, on my current weather – some days more predictable than others – some days when I say it is going to shine, you had better not forget your umbrella and galoshes). But… there is more than a drop of the idealist in my soul. I am hopeful, would be a good descriptive phrase. Perhaps a phrase of introduction….”Hallo, I am K, and I am also Hopeful.”( yes, with a capital H.)
Now that is not to say that I am without moods. That I never have been known to forget where the last place I put my hope was. Did I lose it while shopping? Did I leave it on the bench when I sat down next to the sour faced woman who was berating her child with the beautiful eyes? Does she have it now? (wouldn’t that be nice though?)
But somehow hope always comes back. I find it like the $20 bill in last winter’s coat pocket – and a celebration ensues. What a find! What a miraculous thing that this hope hid out the whole summer in such a dark safe place, and here it is just when the cold wind is ready to set in and turn me blue right down to my bones!
And sometimes I trust it to the wrong places for safekeeping, and it comes back dinged up and tarnished and needs some work to restore it. But sometimes, the patina makes everything more beautiful…sometimes old battered things are far sweeter than the shiny new ones. What good is a brand new toy that you never take out of the box? I guess you could sell it on ebay? I think that would be a shifty deal, money in exchange for hope. And what would you set the reserve at? And what if it was a knock-off, not the real deal, what if it was false?
Nah, I’ll just use mine thanks, and just trust that it won’t break altogether. And if it does – I’ll figure out a way to fix it. I’m good at fixing broken things, like hearts, and horses. And if I can’t do it myself – and this is where the optimism fits in I suppose – I’ll bet that somebody else can. And I’ll bet that I will find them at just the right time. Things work like that, they really do.
I am excited about it all- about all these mysteries. All of the things that are to be learned. There isn’t enough time to discover them all – but I’ll do my best. I’ll try. 
So, I was thinking today about art, and artists of all kinds, and mainly about Inspiration. And where that comes from? Where do you find it? You surely can’t buy that on Ebay. Look it up though, maybe you can, you’d be amazed at what you can find there these days. But what I was thinking is that it is strange – specifically that interviews with artists are strange. That somebody will ask a musician who inspired them the most, who influenced their music? And you will usually get “the list”. A list of other musicians who are perhaps similar in style or topic or some such thing. Maybe an alignment of souls? Inspiration has been known to work that way for sure…but what I was thinking – was wouldn’t it be neat if you asked a popular musician who most inspired him to play, and he said “Monet”. Or “Walt Whitman.” I would like to hear a painting, to feel the rhythm and melody of a very good poem. What if he said instead – “My heart told me to play music when I saw that the little girl with the beautiful eyes had found the lost hope of a stranger on the bench in the mall. That’s when I knew the song was in me – and it has been playing through me ever since.”
And my inspiration? Right now it is coming from music. But I am writing, and drawing, and carving wax and shaping silver and gold out of what that music is saying to my soul….
That is what is inspiring me – that and riding Lyrical (the most magical of all rosey grey ponies) across the fields of this strange red island at breakneck speeds and laughing, and being a child again – free of worry on the back of a pony. If you have ever had a dream where you could fly…that is what Lyrical is…exhilaration on four hooves. In fact, everybody should have a pony. If they did (and now this is just something I feel in my heart – no scientific studies have been completed or any such thing, but) my hunch is that it would be a happy world indeed.
Somebody wrote a song about that feeling once, and now I know what he’s singing about….
And if I had a boat
I’d go out on the ocean
And if I had a pony
I’d ride him on my boat
And we could all together
Go out on the ocean
Me upon my pony on my boat
Well, I don’t have a boat, but I sure do have a pony… and I ride her on the edge of the sea, so that is almost as lovely.
And unrelated, but one from me that’s been mulling around….maybe the start of something else, I’ll let it sit a while and see what it does.
the marks we leave behind
by K.
i felt your footsteps fall
on this red earth – knew the vibration
through the sole
of my own foot. the air
shimmered, even
the potato blossoms
stopped growing and perked up
to listen.
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