Because I'm Shy. And I Changed my Mind, It's Dorky Mimes."

I woke up yesterday, surprised to find that instead of the usual sight of the wall blocking my view of a gorgeous Autumn horizon or the bedside clock telling me that I've woken up too early again, I was standing in front of a Noir detective with a camera for a head (Copyleft, Jimmy 'The Snitch' Tytlips). Somehow, rather than being allowed to scratch my crotch (since a man ought to have the right to know he can still give another man a good time... with penis jokes, I mean), Zeus (because Cronus changed his name to Laius) plunged me into a soporific syndicate of Question Thyme (you ask a thyme plant questions and wonder why it doesn't reply, first person to guess why wins $1. Last time I checked, they were in the 7th season, and no one cracked it yet. My guess is that the plant doesn't understand English, but that's just me).

We conversed, The Cameraman and Complacent Boy surrounded by the Glitzy Hoi Polloi, and drifted into a discussion of inspiration. A person then broke through the monotonous mass, it was a woman in a familiar navy blue dress (she wore it in an old, pensive dream, long before I knew her name) with her brown hair wistfully waving in the breeze and a smile that captivated blind men.
"Her", I replied to the question of where I get my inspiration.

I woke from my non-existent dream three hours later with the bedside clock in the other room and the wall having turned into a window. Rodney's white screen blinked at me, Krishnan Guru-Murthy tried to tell me something about the economy, my fern grew. And it dawned on me that not once during my selfish Mancunian adventure did I acknowledge one of my great muses. I also realised what a seasonable Thyme, sorry, time, I meant "time", I also realised what a seasonable time it was that I dawned upon the dawn of Realisation Anew, I'd forgotten what day it was and what today would be until my subconscious reminded me; but this one's for a different paragraph.

I've mentioned, here and elsewhere, my... er... particular infatuations (although TheSage might disagree with my usage of the term "infatuation"), but this isn't it. I'm not that difficult to inspire, give me a sunrise, the squirrel family living across the street (they're pretty weird, one of them rants all the time, another is constantly hyped up on medication, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bear with a nipple for an ear once), or Cynic, and I'm good to go, but people that manage to inspire me like nature or Focus (and Traced in Air when it finally gets here) are few and far between.

She is one of those people that inspire me, through her actions or just her presence in my mind. When I fed off bad energy to write a story, my characters were my rima oris, they spat vitriol, and weren't that fun to create. She inspired me to create better characters in that dark, dull world; characters that were less me and my distaste. Characters that I enjoyed creating, that changed my Mojo into the good kind, that made me attack the forbidding White Screen of Doom for no other reason than simple enjoyment.
And I'll tells ya, that in itself is a difficult thing to. I'm not sure if I've said it before, but I'll say it now, I hate writing. As "talented" as I may apparently be at this, I'd rather be taking pictures or playing an acoustic guitar. And I know I may not be as good at it (just look at the Leyenda Suite, people thought it was the music that was the afterthought), but that's what I really want to do, I want to show you what I see and hear, rather than just tell you about it, but I'm forced to sit here and type instead of click or strum. And she is one of the reasons I'm still doing it, and finding some things to enjoy about my pretty little words.

She was my muse, once, when I'd write for eighteen hours and love every minute of it. That time, when I strangled my best friend and hated myself because of it, and her smile alone was enough to remind me that there was still one truly beautiful human being out there. Or when I choked on my 159 pages, and she, a world away and blithely unconcerned with the minutia of my existence or even aware of her impact on the life of one P.J.N. Rockinbottom, made me slap myself on the back in an appropriately violent manner.

And for that, I've got to say this: thank you. Thank you for inspiring me a year ago, and thank you for continuing to inspire me. Oh, and, before I head off back into Wordland and deal with robots, policemen, and Chesterfield coats...

Happy birthday.