Missing in Action: What takes us away from that we know?

Where have you been? 

Just the other day I had a friend ask me if she had missed a blog I had written. (It turns out that someone actually does follow these musings.) I told her that I had not written anything for awhile but promised to get back to it soon. Well, here I am getting back to it.

Why the absence? Why haven’t I penned anything for you to laugh or cry over? That’s a really good question. Why does any writer go through periods of not writing anything? Why does an artist not paint, a songwriter not compose, or sculptor not shape something from nothing? Come to think of it, why does a writer write, an artist paint, a composer compose, and a sculptor sculpt anyway? What inspires them? 

In ancient Greece a Muse was that entity that was considered the source of the arts. It was generally understood that there were nine Muses, each with their own domain. If I were to truly follow this mythology then I would rely on any number of them. Euterpe was the Muse for Music, Song and Lyric Poetry. So for the poems that I have written she would’ve been my Muse. Erato was the Muse for Love poetry so there are times I would reach out to her. Thalia, the Muse for Comedy, would also occasionally be consulted. But the Muse I would have spent the most time with would’ve been Melpomene. She was the Muse of tragedy.

In today’s terms I would say that for the longest time my Muse was a lady named Grief. She walked with me everywhere. She slept beside me and scripted my dreams. She was there waiting for me with a big cup of sorrow in the mornings. And there were times I drank deeply. But this Muse has taken a back seat of late. She has been replaced by a Muse that has caused me to reach out in other manners. Sure, I continue to write, but now I write personal notes. This Muse, Love, has shown me other ways to express myself. And, as she continues to work her way into my heart and fill up the cracks, crevices, and ravines, I find that I can write again but with words that bring tears of a different flavor. Tears of love and tears of joy are so much sweeter than tears of grief and bitterness. And while the tears of grief may still occasionally come, the overwhelming aroma of the tears of love and joy soon bring sweetness back to my life.

So forgive me for not being as faithful to my blog as I had thought that I would be. I’m busy being faithful to someone else.

How do those tears taste?