Unmasked
Stay at home today… at your writing altar. No one will see you being yourself. Write flamboyantly in the breeze of these hours. Be intimate. Your notebook will capture your muse.
Juice an orange in a glass citrus squeezer.
Hesitate over a chocolate. Twirl your tongue into the depths of its liquid centre.
Claim a drinking vessel. Lips respond to fine bone china with floral fluttery… eyes have an affair with unabashed roses.
Arise and walk. Take a tour of your home. Linger over childhood photos of yourself when your heart palpitated like a spring rabbit.
Stride over your back yard. Fingertips investigate. Fists are earthmovers. Palms rock-a-bye an acid green worm. Spread yourself on the prickles of lawn. See things… a basking beetle receiving the sun on its polished brown shield. Giggling baby tomatoes fatten. Silly plantings are remembered.
Mystery is your instructor. Slip out to the local library; search the children’s section for wonderland, drifting away with the improbable, transfixed as a child. Perch on a red stool — become the ruler of the toadstool ring. Burst home with an armful of books and read them on your tummy. Blankets, pillows and speckled cookies encourage distant thoughts to assemble themselves; you never know what might happen.
Newsagents are your stop for magazines to seize and carry home on a wet day with nougat chocolates. The display of glossy subjects from kittens to writing is quite an investigation. Be alert for new ones. Sharp scissors will cut out pictures to paste into a Thinking Book. Some have a secret story within them — a magnifying glass explores the details. The Thinking Book is a large spiral sketchbook… portly, with thick paper, and strewn with doodle people that appear by their own decision.
Art supply shops are hard to leave. Buy watercolour tubes, shaped squirrel brushes, boards, pencils, and of course fountain and nib pens with twinkling glass bottles of ink in black and oxblood, and do not resist moonlight violet… whatever your muse craves. Michelangelo stands near. Sketches of characters translate to stories and a spurt of crimson paint reminds you of something you meant to write about one day.
Bookshops are for deep diving. There are oodles of identities and ideas here. Turning over the bejeweled cover that glows with a raised amethyst title, you find personalities, settings, names, tastes and emotions that you can absorb and store for future consideration. Buy notebooks that glow, sparkle, quiver… either splendid or sensible. Of course you have your perfect pen, but think of a frog and lily jug filled with every sort of instrument, including a parrot quill, because each one places you into a guise.
Part the sequined curtain of the Crystal shop and be hoisted away with incense. Inhale new books; fall into crystal spheres; hear music that levitates you over to the onyx eggs. On the way, your eager eye passes a beckoning book: “Be Your Own Wizard” — silken robes rustle past your face. Dreamcatchers gather nightmares and turn them into fables of dread. Ornate tarot cards call you to hazy worlds. Mists of coffee are calling. Time to go. Seesaw out with turquoise rune-stones engraved in gold.
Teashops cannot be bettered for victims and perpetrators. Who is that man slurping Irish Breakfast while penning notes with emerald ink? Why does the freckled blonde with the cherry earrings laugh? Stab a fork into some more zingy lemon meringue pie.
Tonight you will be reading lines written by the unmasked you… jottings of memories — far gone summer holidays; friends that used to be; pyjamas on Saturday morning. Scrutinize the pavements of life and fill many notebooks; all of which will be of particular use when you need “fiction”.
Esmerelda Jones… writer of desires
Victoriana, Victorian Swoon & Erotica, Gods & Goddesses: The Wisdom And Pleasures of Ancient Greece, Classic Romance, Poems For The Passionate, Bushrangers, Ghosts I Have Known, Crystal Ball Clairvoyant.
