The Muse Has The Attention Span Of A Squirrel

It's 1996, I'm 8 years old, and there's a squirrel in the kitchen.

A real-life actual squirrel, right in front of me.

My little 8-year-old mind is in such awe.

Mom and Dad are also in the kitchen.

The back sliding door is wide open.

The squirrel crossed over the threshold of the sliding door and was now fully in the kitchen, tail tweaking nervously off to one side.

When a squirrel is nervous or anxious or afraid, its tails folds up over its body, along its spine, and then tweaks off kinda rigid to one side.

Despite its nerves, its little paws continue forward past the kitchen table, toward Dad.

The squirrel hesitantly claws its way UP MY DAD'S JEANS.

As it climbs up past his right knee, Dad extends a hand toward it and hands it an unshelled peanut.

The squirrel takes it, fixes it in place in its mouth, scoots around turning 180°, pauses for a moment, and then shoots down his leg, past the kitchen table, through the sliding door, across the lawn, and up the tree, and into its favorite spot as it cracks into the peanut.

Words don't do this memory justice.

You just had to be there.

Dad called the squirrel Dumb-Dumb, but I think she was smart.

Smart-Smart.

Smart like the Muse.

I'll tell you how we got the squirrel in the house in a minute, but first let's about the Muse.

We all want to be touched by the Muse.

Touched by true Inspiration.

We want an idea to strike us like lightening, illuminating our inner world and, in that flash of brilliance, give us perfectly clear answers to our hardest struggles.

We want the Muse to pass our threshold and climb up our legs, even if only for a moment.

We want to feel the Muse's claws scratching our skin through our jeans as She climbs up our leg to take our offering.

But the Muse has been hurt before.

She has been betrayed by countless men and women through the ages.

Millions of years of evolution have taught the Muse that She must be cautious around humans.

She is content with just going about her business, collecting and storing all the nuts–I mean, ideas–that she can find.

She travels far and wide.

She knows each season.

She knows where to gather the best ideas.

She knows how and where to store them.

Why risk Her ideas on mere mortals?

Why plant a living idea in a man or woman who might only entertain it for a moment before making a series of fearful choices and insecure decisions that inevitably lead to the abandonment of the idea and it wilting away and dying?

Why?

Do you know how hard it is to bring a dead idea back to life?

I don't, but it's probably like, really hard.

But the Muse can do it.

She can revive ideas.

...but then She has to go through the whole process of finding a new (hopefully better) person for the idea, climb up their legs, and do everything all over again.

And She will do it again and again, no matter how long it takes to bring an idea to life.

But She needs our help to make dreams (the non-physical) come true (the physical).

Some people can be trusted with this responsibility, but not all.

She must be discerning.

She waits and watches us and decides who to bless.

She's in the room with you right now as you read this.

Right there in the corner.

Over by the trash.

She's looking for peanuts.

Mkay, probably not looking for peanuts in the trash, but She's always around.

Always keeping an eye on us.

She's like Santa Claus!

She sees us when we're sleeping.

She knows when we're awake.

She knows when we've been doomscrolling, playing video games, and watching Netflix 7 hours a day OR writing in our journal, drawing in our sketchbook, meditating on our yoga mat, and making something that we will share with others.

She knows who has been behaving in a worthy way and who has NOT been behaving in a worthy way.

She doesn't care if you were bad or good last year.

She cares about how you are showing up this month, this week.

But more than anything, she cares whether or not you show up today.

Okay so how did a squirrel end up in the kitchen, past the kitchen table, up my Dad's leg, and on his knee?

It starts two or three months before that moment.

In the beginning, Dumb-Dumb was just another random squirrel that would run along the long side of the fence in the backyard.

She would pause along our fence because our tree had these seed pod things hanging off branches everywhere that she could pick and eat right there on the fence.

My Dad would see Dumb-Dumb, grab a few peanuts, go out back, talk to it like a beloved pet, wave a peanut out in the air for her to see, and then toss it across the yard toward her–far enough away from him and the house for her to feel comfortable climbing down to collect it.

He would do this almost every day.

Every time he saw her he would repeat the process, and he was always keeping an eye out for her.

Dumb-Dumb would climb down the fence, nervously coming an inch or two closer to him every time, until eventually she was in the house, up his leg, and resting one paw on the back of his thumb to balance while the other paw collected the peanut and placed it in her mouth.

After a few months of my Dad showing Dumb-Dumb that he could be trusted, we would randomly see her standing upright on her hind legs looking through the sliding glass door.

Like a peanut-addicted crackhead wondering if we was inside and if we had anymore of them peanuts.

Squirrels and the Muse deal with strange men in similar ways.

He's gotta prove himself first.

He does it by showing up every day with a sweet offering.

If he rushes forward impatiently, then he spooks Her away and has to work to get Her to trust him again.

He must be gentle, he must show up, and he must do that again and again and again.

And that, my friends, was the tale of Dumb-Dumb and the Muse.

I could actually feel the scrape of the Muse's claws invigorating me as I wrote this.

I think she approves of being compared to a squirrel.

I saw a squirrel on my walk this morning.

Snapped a good photo of her too.

That was the spark for today's writing.

Every time I see a squirrel I think of my Dad and Dumb-Dumb.

My Dad didn't realize this at the time, but he was teaching me how to live creatively, how to work with Inspiration, with the Muse.

So now every time I see a squirrel I will think of the Muse too.

She doesn't ask for much, just a peanut a day.

Have you fed your Muse yet today?