Sunday, September 10, 2006

Inspiring Country



Yesterday, my son and I visited a lake a few miles from my new place in Abita Springs. It was almost completely overgrown by Lily pads and other greenery, with cypress trees poking their knees up from the swampy water in various places. I immediately started thinking of what kind of evil thing might be living under that water, living there, perhaps causing the plant growth as a way of hiding itself. There was a children's playground nearby, with no children on it. Had the evil already reached out to take them, I wondered? Or had the children sensed the evil and no longer wanted to play there? But what would happen when the parents, always less aware of such things, made their kids go out to play?

That night, with a nearly full moon overhead, my son and I took a long walk along the dirt and gravel roads around our place. We saw an area where there were literaly thousands of small spider webs strung on the ground beneath the trees. But no spiders. Were they organizing, massing for war? Or had something within the woods...called them, perhaps to wear as clothing when it came shambling out of the trees to take the two foolish humans marching along the white line of the road in the darkness?

Every night my new world feeds me. Right now I'm just turning myself into a glutton, letting the images pour in. I'm hoping one day soon some of them will start to pour out again onto the page. Maybe my fiction well has been empty. If so, it's being "spring" fed now.

1 comment:

  1. Great images. Sometimes there are roads we travel that galvanize us as writers. The description you give here makes this sound like one of those electric spots. Me? I find inspiration in the lonely places; the places that seem to cast themselves in black and white regardless of the time of year or the time of day.

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