"I Feel Like I Can Take on the Whole Empire Myself!"

It's a weird thing to admit, but I guess it's time to be honest. I have weird motivations in life. I have weird fascinations that kick me into high gear and light that proverbial fire that sends me soaring higher than that cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs mascot.

It's not money. It's not fame. It's not power. It's not anything rational, yet it fills me with that warm super juice, venom, adrenaline rush burst that has me quoting Dack Ralter from The Empire Strikes Back - "Right now I feel like I can take on the whole empire myself!"




At random intervals, I'll be struck by this lightning bolt of inspiration, and I'll have to rush home or find some covert, hidden workplace to crawl into, where I furiously scribble whatever bullocks needs to be written. What always strikes me about it, when I take five seconds to think about it after the fact, is how ridiculous it seems.

Today, for instance, I was walking down the main business district by the campus in Madison, Wisconsin. I had gone up there for the day to explore a new brewery, and I was feeling pretty good (not drunk by any means, merely contented and satisfied at a fantastic joint that appealed both to my beer connoisseurship and love for organics). Minding my own business, I carried on walking, lost in my own world of paranoia and occasional enchantment.

On my walkabout, I crossed paths with a woman my age who absorbed all my attention. Deep thoughts ceased to percolate to the surface of my brain. The usual "Bad Moon Rising" track that accompanied my thoughts of this diseased world stopped playing - the speakers seemingly broken. My toes lost traction; their communication with my gray matter halted. Blood still pumped through my veins, albeit warmer, and that weird, childish sensation of wonderment accosted my usual "logical" demeanor. I stopped moving. Luckily, I was planted before a busy crosswalk a few paces away from her, so my lack of movement remained inconspicuous. The green light and the zooming cars made sure of that.

She wasn't dressed up or on the prowl to steal glances either. She was merely on a run - trying to stay fit and healthy in the frosty atmosphere that normally descends this time of year. The woman didn't seem to notice me either. I was but a background character lost in a sea of background characters in a Where's Waldo? book.




Still, I noticed her, and that was all that mattered. I don't even know why she stood out to me. She wasn't particularly beautiful in the sense that television, magazines, books, and movies deem beautiful. She looked ordinary. Healthy but ordinary nonetheless. Her eyes were small, dark, and beady. Her hair was a silky-smooth oak color pulled back into a ponytail and lined with a black headband. Her skin looked a bit pale, but that could have been the lack of light filtering through the cloudy skies above. When she glanced over her shoulder for a quick minute, her expression was one I read as peacefulness, as one of being enraptured in the moment of autonomous physical labor.

Seeing her though was something akin to majestic. It was as if someone hit the jukebox in the back of the brain and kicked on "Dreamweaver" by Gary Wright. All of the sudden my writer's block I have been battling against dissipated. Hundreds of article ideas flooded my brain, ones I could use for the new site I was brought on to write at. Short stories burst forth into cosmic existence. Plot arcs for novels jotted themselves down on mental post-it notes.




Beauty. Life. Existence. It was all wonderful, and here at the center of the universe, on some random street in the middle of Madison, Wisconsin was my muse. And I have no idea why. I cannot explain it. I cannot begin to comprehend it. I can only accept this gift of writing rejuvenation and use it well.

Unfortunately, it's rare. Too often has my mind been trained to think analytically and mathematically, that I typically lose myself to this form of mental programming. I forget what it's like to let the gut feelings soar, to let my inner feelings reach out to the world to be enraptured by it. When it does hit, however, it's nothing short of amazing - even more amazing than the Amazing Spider-Man.

The encounter lasted an entire span of 50 to 60 seconds. Once the light changed, the woman, who had been running in place during the duration of traffic, bounded ahead like a gazelle and through the distant crowd, forever to be missing from my universe. Those insane thoughts sieged my neuron control center begging me to return here again and again, ultimately seeking out this person and introducing myself.

The inner writer started whispering, "It's fate, dude," while the rational, cold, calculating, logical part of the mind responded, "Hey moron, you dug her, and she's gone, so let's go home and get back to work, okay mook? Is that alright with you? We've got a society to function within, buddy."

I'm going to flip a coin someday to see which side I will allow to win.