Keyes Beach

Maria's sleeping. Soundly. I want to wake her and say let's go let's go babe I know this place. I don't.

I let her sleep and grab Sam's car keys. He's holding her close and snoring up a storm. I want to laugh and just take their picture. They're in love. Wonderfully.

In a rush, I spill coffee all over my wrinkled Massachusetts map.  I find Keyes Beach. 

I remember the bonfires, the vodka, the drugs, the rush, the happiness, the blur. The warm happiness.

I don't want that now. Not now. 

Keys in. Engine starts. The rush of this moment. Before the trip. Images, blurry in my mind and pieces of white covering memories and erasing bad moments.

I just want to fill in the white my way.

I drive a long time. Hills and valleys, gravel, earth, cement, deer signs. A good portion of american virgin land and hunger for more. 

New England is gorgeous. Like a tanned siren asleep on a rock. New England is a neck, a naked shoulder, bitten here and there with rock, with pine, with wood, with crystal lakes. 

Getting sleepy I stop in Hyannis at some old B&B. I have no change of clothes so I take off my sweater and just remain in my undershirt.

I wash my face. There's another tenant. Temporary tenant. We meet in the kitchen. I don't ask his name and he doesn't ask mine. We are strangers. We aren't strangers. We are alike. We aren't alike.

I meet him and can't imagine ever saying good-bye. Not really. 

We speak a while. I have no idea I have just met my muse. You don't plan on meeting your muse in an obscure kitchen in a random house on a solo roadtrip. A muse appears when the artist has but given up. The muse uncovers a tiny portion of the artist to himself. Or herself. The artist, in his shame alone and a little lost, takes direction from the muse and remembers what they are capable of doing. What they can take in their own two hands and make.

The muse is the only one capable of moulding the artist. She takes him and makes a man out of him. My muse has made a man out of me. And I'm a woman. Unbeknownst to me, my muse made me complete. All night, my muse made me complete. Over and over. I became complete waiting for sunrise.

I have no idea what the artist does to the muse. Probably not much. Probably not a thing. Nothing.

But my muse made me, me.

Naturally, it is the responsibility of the muse to end the night. To end the dance. The artist gets lost in musings. The artist, drunk and always compensating and always fabricating, would have the dance last all night.

But my  muse reminded me that a night is composed of many nights. Many tiny nights. All sewn together. 

Dawn was gathering her gloss when my muse was already leaving me. In spirit, he was not longer there. As if the piece of god blown into the dome we built together had died or stopped glowing or breathing. 

The rip lasted a few seconds. Clutching his head and haunted, in despair, my muse tore himself away from me. 

I stood. Torn from him. Pregnant with what was to become my work. This abandonment took a while to seep in. By the time I understood what happened to me, my muse was a dream. His hands on my heart, on my body --  pieces of wind scattered. Scattered and lost. 

The night with my muse was probably one of the most important nights in my life. In retrospect, I couldn't have been clumsier, smaller and sillier. But I was true. And the fabricated parts -- well, the muse knows of them already.

I wish every artist finds their muse. The artist must be strong however. Because the artist's imagination is powerful, the moment of the meeting and the moment of goodbye remain strong and manifest sometimes when the artist is not creating. They are the painful reminders of the price we have to pay to create. To maintain the balance. For every creation, a loss. So, I pay.

I do not know how to cover the loss. The uncovered hole the muse left in me. So I write.

I write to clothe myself again.

I write and it is not so hard. I write and it all seems worth it. Maybe that's the cure to the curse. An imposed payment to keep going. Maybe. I don't know.

I don't know.

I only know I grab my keys and head for Keyes.

This was a pitstop and it's over.

I drive until I see the beach. Until the wheels crush sand. I left at dawn. 

Dusk now. The clouds are crazy. They're every colour I've ever imagined. The waves don't stop. I close my eyes and rush in. I stay underwater a long time. By the time I come up, the sun is gone and all the crazy colours are gone too.

Shivers and happiness. I realize there is no end to this. I'm only just beginning. I send good thoughts and take a big breath. As I close my eyes and feel my hair transform into silk in the water again, I see ...