Ode to a Muse

At first, there was darkness. The kind of darkness that is absolute and oppressing, forbidding of contrast and all the more empty for it. In this darkness, lay a lump, oblivious and indifferent to its surroundings.

A single ray of light pierced the darkness, like a herald to your glory. Suddenly, things inside the darkness took shape and the lump saw himself for what he was for the first time. Invigorated, the man stumbled towards the light but before he reached it, a million other rays joined the first, like an angelic choir. Awed by the spectacle, the man stopped and was surprised to find that these bursts of brilliance were not only magnificent to behold, they also warmed his face, gently caressed his skin and even managed to penetrate his chest and touch his soul.

The light of day changed the man, for not only did he see things as they were now, he also saw the beauty in them, what they could be and how much he longed to feel your touch when he shaped them.

And so he shaped and rejoiced in the gift you had given him, the ability to see and to feel with more than just his senses. In the brightest of your moments, he felt inspired and crafted works of beauty, his imaginations unleashed by you and his intentions pure.

But soon after these moments of glory, your light began to fade and it disturbed the man greatly. He was so caught up in imposing your beauty upon the world that he had started to take the source of it for granted. As if to taunt him, the rays once again likened themselves to a choir but this song was not an aria of glory, it was a swan song. The last ray faded away into darkness and once again, the man sunk into uncaring despair.

However, something inside him had changed and it was not indifference that paralyzed him. It was grief and a melancholic longing. Remembering you and your light, he felt inspired once more, but it was a shoddy imitation of the creativity he felt when you flooded him. And so it was that the man created the fire. Elated by his success, he rejoiced in the light and the warmth that it seemed to give him. But men are greedy and fire is devious. Drunk on his success, he reasoned that he could not only receive the warmth and light that the fire provided, he could take it and make it his own.

Sitting in darkness once again, the man rued his creation as he nursed his burnt fingers, the price he paid for attempting to steal. The fire had been a fickle mistress and without his care and supervision, it had left the man shortly after punishing him for his greed.

Rage and fury overcame him. He raided the surrounding nature for wax, blinded to the destruction he was unleashing by his quest to get closer to you. Out of this wax, he fashioned wings and after he could improve them no more, he sat in brooding silence, awaiting your return.

At the first sign of light, the man rushed out of the darkness, disregarding the spectacle that had once awed him, rooted him to the spot, touched his soul. The man had grown cold and calloused in your absence and perhaps it was the desire to inflame his soul once more that drove him to the peak of the highest mountain or perhaps it was the greedy desire to touch you, to dominate you and to subjugate you to his will.

With a bold leap, he jumped off the cliff and felt his anger drain away as your light once again touched him. The heady intensity of your radiance threatened to overwhelm him and in a fever-like haze, he journeyed onwards in his quest to be closer to your magnificence. But his craving for inspiration and warmth had caused him to forget the revealing aspect of your light. Below him, a path of destruction ran through nature and high up in the sky, you saw all of it. Displeased and angered at this, you judged him unworthy of your gift. Not as cruel as the fire, you granted him one last brilliant and flaring shower of your magnificence. His wax wings enveloped him, the warmth he had hoped for turning into unbearable anguish. Temporarily blinded, he lost sight of you and regarded the sobering view below him. He understood that in his greed, he had strayed far from the path to bring your beauty into the world.

And so he wandered in darkness, too depressed to create and yet to restless to abandon the world. His path was bleak and dull, the most stimulation he could hope for being vague shapes, the last lingering signs of your blessing. Every now and then he stumbled upon curiosities. Animals, plants, even rocks, that seemed to glow in their own right, as if they were champions of your divinity. Excited and uplifted at first, he soon found himself craving more once again as the memory of your gift clawed itself out of the back of his mind. These pure visions of your beauty were the sparks and his soul the kindling.

Light headed and confused by memories of old, he began to shape and create again. He strove to distill your elegance, your beauty and your blessing into it's purest form and soon after, he had discovered electricity. But no matter how hard he worked, how much of his energy he poured into working the dynamo in an attempt to reproduce your divinity, he could not achieve the sublime feeling of warmth that seemed to permeate every cell in his body while you touched him. The light was brilliant, bright, but deceptive, for it had none of the warmth and gentleness that you possess.

Despondent and disillusioned the man smashed his experiments, raging at his inability to own you, cage you, dominate you. After the dust settled, his world was once again bathed in light and just as you had, understanding dawned upon him. Something as splendid, awe-inspiring and marvelous as your gift could not be replicated, contained or kept. All he could do was enjoy and bask in its glory, feel and experience the magnificence and try to capture your beauty in his words so that others might understand and see your light.

And so it was, that the man in question, filled with the warmth of your caress and his soul brightened by your gift, put pen to paper and wrote.