oh...crap.

Yargh. I keep trying to write something essayish, or bloggish; there are certainly plenty of thoughts milling around in my brain; but my Muse has forsaken me this week, at least as far as nonfiction is concerned.

Oh, I know: I'll tell you briefly about my Muse.

Marianne and I, years ago, loved to compare and contrast our muses. Our muses didn't get along. Hers is (or was) this vain, arrogant, sarcastic, hilarious, gorgeous, well-muscled Greek Apollo-type. Mine is...well, for a strange wonder, Alexander Pope (for whom I harbor, historically, no great affection) described her best:

But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods. (Eloisa to Abelard)

Substitute "The Muse of Sarah" for "Black Melancholy" and there's my inner picture of my Muse: A ghostly woman with salt-colored skin and black hair, eyes and robes standing still in the November woods -- silent, voiceless, terrible, knowing.

Not that she is without joy. Not by any stretch. Or humor. Actually, she seems to disappear altogether when I write essays and poetry, perhaps transfigured into something of a different kind of beauty. But today she has reappeared and pointed toward the fiction which I have neglected for years, and which lends itself badly to the blogosphere. I'm not her most obedient ward -- I am, for instance, writing this -- but I find myself itching to give voice to a silenced woman of mythology, and to that work I must turn my hands.

But there are a lot of things spinning around in my head about the love of God -- my favorite subject lately -- so once I have something coherent spun out, I'll set it down for you, my faithful readers. I beg your patience for a little longer.