So-so

Sometimes there are great heaving waves of brain output. Other times...so-so. Certain days it seems like the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy is squirting thigh-thick beams of creative gamma rays through your fingers which is murder on electronics but great for the flinging of tales. Other days...meh. Furious psychedelic carousel of dreams! Or lame and rusty spring-mounted thing that might have been a green happy worm of some kind at one time but you can't really tell because the paint's corroded and now it looks a little like an evil bouncing clown mutant.

There's all sorts of advice fluttering in the webwinds about how to hitch a spin on the great heaving supermassive carousel and avoid riding the so-so mehful rusty clown mutant. However, all that mostly reduces to cupping the ember in your mental hands and puffing on it, tossing in bits of groovy fuel until it flares up into a world-burning conflagration that can be seen from space. So you need your own spark, to start with, and fuel--whatever burns, I've been trying to use mattresses from an abandoned motel in the corner of my psyche--but damn some days the mental lungs just don't have enough puff-puffery to stoke that flame.

Then there's kindness to yourself, because nobody's helped by a wire hanger-whipping on the off days (entertaining though it may be). At some point, though, kindness becomes an indulgence, and it's at that point that it's a good idea to put down the spoon and the dropper and leave that motel for daylight in search of better fuel and a cleaner place to sleep: a room with a big well-glazed window and southern exposure, surrounded by dry crackly kindling that whispers ideas in the dark and is happy to burst into flame for you in the precisely-pointed red brick barbecue out back.