I have a sort of muse, at least a disembodied voice that comes through loud and clear, from time to time, especially when I have been slacking off. He is a little bit intimidating. I haven’t succumbed yet to Yeats’ automatic writing exercises, but this muse has crept into my writing, as an independent persona, most often chastising me for not buckling down and getting some work produced. Like any good devotee of a muse, I have created a mythology around him. I am a bit embarrassed to put these words down on the page, for it might make me sound a bit loopy. He first appeared as an imaginary friend when I was a youngster. Here’s his story. When I was two and a half years old, I went into the hospital for surgery. This is probably my first real memory, being enclosed in a crib near the nurse’s station while I recovered. I could only hear the nurses’ muffled conversations from my vantage point. The whole place seemed monstrously big; it was hard to wrap my head around it. At a certain moment, an old man appeared in a wheelchair next to my crib. The memory is hazy, however, and it has the impression of being a bit unreal, as if I could have imagined the whole thing. Much later on, I decided that he must have been a ghost of some sort. But I only attached that meaning to his presence as an adult, when looking back upon it. At the time, he seemed very much alive. He came home from the hospital with me, and he took up residence in the bathroom at my house. I could go in there, lock the door, and have a bit of privacy with him. We would engage in deep toddler banter behind the closed door. Our friendship ended when my family moved into a new house, and he didn’t follow me. For a good while, I just chalked his disappearance up to outgrowing the need for an imaginary friend. But then he entered into my life once again, as I was tackling a writing project a few years back. From time to time, I have wished for a more comforting muse – someone to stir up romantic passion or lull me into a pleasant stupor, where the imagination just rolls forward like the incoming tide. He is a bit of a hard-ass. Although I often wish for someone more gentle, he is perhaps what I need most from time to time, in order to better direct me back to the creative pursuit.

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