Inflate Your Imagination

I can’t write anymore. I wrack my brain instead. I’m searching for a beginning to this session but all I can come up with is frustration. Holding my head in my hands like a balloon that is being squeezed skin to rubber. A tormenting sound that has me wanting to break stuff in order to muffle the noise. There is no relief as I imagine throwing a balloon at the television. The room is silent otherwise, distracting from the luxury of imagination, but not broken. 

Maybe if I stop caressing my inflated head I will come up with a word before it pops. 

Think. Think hard.  

There it is. Vision. 

I will focus on the word vision. The version of vision that is different from imagination. Just seeing, not seeing is believing. 

If I can see the words being formed on the screen I can key in the next word without thinking before the cursor blinks. I can go from one word to the next without the distraction of imagination. I can tumble through the story without thinking too much about where I will land. 

That won’t work either. I can use my vision instead to look up and get words from objects I see around the room.

Looking up to see a bookshelf in the corner there is an eclectic collection with a lot of my favorites from years ago when I would read for inspiration. There is a wealth of knowledge on these shelves I could look into and come up with a better idea to write from, but I won’t. 

I also look up to see the television but my mind is already blank and I don’t want to fill it with the type of learning that promotes temporary amnesia. I need to start thinking creatively again, not torment myself further watching the imagination of other people in motion, so I don’t.

Scanning the room further I see many overlooked possessions but I don’t see a balloon. I used a balloon simile earlier without actually seeing one. I began the comparison with my head as a balloon because my head was empty. A balloon that is full can’t be empty, it holds what we can not see. 

I used my imagination without an idea for a story, prompting myself by writing out loud. I imagined what frustration sounds like. I tried to find a way to continue the story by writing exactly what comes to mind. I used vision to get more ideas but I fell short because I don’t, I won’t find a story from the imagination of others. I figured out that in order to reveal what we can’t see we need to hold it in our hands. Finally I came up with something to write about by writing what I wrote about. 

Writing shouldn’t torment me. Writing can actually release any frustrations I may be feeling. When I don’t have an idea in my head of what I’m going to write about, I can put one word after the other, look up to describe what I see and the feelings, the story, my vision will follow. Imagination is limited by everything we’ve heard and seen, but is limitless to what we still have not encountered right in front of us.