I have been suffering lately from a bad case of writer’s block, which has resulted in thirty of the most frustrating days I’ve ever experienced as a writer. The thought of possibly throwing it out the window and posting the Nurse Betty story I wrote for the NPR contest just didn’t sit very well with me. So this month instead of telling you a story – and yes, I did start a few so don’t think I didn’t try – I have decided to tell you of where I go to get my stories.
I hope you enjoy this little respite from my usual.

My Muse
By John Pender

My muse is a peculiar little fellow. He stands a scant four feet tall and looks like your average garden gnome, beard and all, save the hardened features, leathered skin, and the fact his clothing is made of dirty brown burlap instead of those bright, cheery reds and greens you normally see. The hair on his head and the beard on his face are even brown. But not his eyes; no, they’re blue – the sharpest blue you’ve ever seen. It’s as if he has retired from a long life of hard labor, but I wonder if he has, in fact, always been that way, for he hasn’t aged a day in the seventeen years I’ve known him. He smokes incessantly from an intricately hand-carved mahogany pipe he never lights and come to think of it, never refills – at least as far as I have ever seen. And he walks with a cane so twisted and knurled one wonders how he manages to stand erect when propped up on it. Sometimes I wonder why he even employs the use of the cane; he’s perfectly capable of navigating without it. Probably just for aesthetic reasons; I guess even a muse needs to make his own fashion statement.
I have no idea what his name is – he’s never told me, and I’ve never pressed the issue – and I find myself sometimes wondering if he even has one. For as many years as I’ve known him, I haven’t even come up with a nickname. I don’t know; just feels so wrong thinking about it. What’s the point anyway? Why assign a moniker to a man who obviously doesn’t want to be named? He has been, is known as, and always will be known simply as my muse; the little guy who spins yarns for me to tell.
Yes, he is the source of the tales I weave; I can always count on him to give me a good storyline when the inspiration hits. Well, most of the time. Lately the little son of a bitch has been playing hide-and-seek with me and unfortunately for me, he plays the game a little too well. For the past month it seems that no matter how hard I look, or where I look, I can’t find him. Every once in a while he will pop out from behind a tree or boulder with his usual greeting of “Well, well. If it isn’t John, John, the farmer’s son!” and throw a line or two from his latest tale at me, sometimes even a few paragraphs, but as soon as I start writing it down and really get into it he runs away laughing. He’s been acting like the little cock-tease girlfriend that shows you just enough to get you horny before stopping you dead in your tracks.
He usually appears to me in our world. Backing up a minute first, when I say he pops out from behind trees and such, I mean it in the literal sense. See, when he appears to me, he is in his own world, but at the same time he is in ours. Let me explain. I may be sitting in my office, my den, even a restaurant of all places (wherever the urge hits me to write) and I start to get a tingling sensation from within, like a small electrical current is passing through my body. When the sensation overtakes my entire form, before me the very fabric of space will open up – and yes, it really looks like a piece of fabric being ripped in two by unseen hands, frays and all, dust particles floating about, the whole nine yards – and I can see straight into his world. When it happens, it is a truly fantastic sight.
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that torn fabric widening into a circular window before you, bordered by a ring of rolling purple clouds with shimmering streaks of silver strewn about like Christmas tinsel. Now imagine that through that window you see the most magical, peaceful, serene landscape you can create; a scene that you and only you can see. Finally, envision that funny little fellow I described earlier stepping through. Wouldn’t that be quite an experience? Well let me tell you – it is.
I have been to his world many a time; he calls the place Blackberry Wood, and I can visit whenever I please. All I have to do is concentrate and the window will open for me. The name comes from the abundance of tennis-ball-sized, sinfully delectable blackberries that grow along the edge of the forest. Sometimes I visit Blackberry Wood more than my muse comes to visit me, for he only visits me when he has a story to tell. I visit for pleasure, mostly in my dreams, for it is the only time I can travel uninterrupted by the distractions in my own world. He always knows I’m there, and I can imagine so because I’m the only visitor allowed, but he never appears unless I ask “You there?” He lives alone in The Wood, yet he’s not alone; it’s not that easy to describe, so I won’t go into detail. I will say though that he is always in good company. But when I visit, or so he tells me, Blackberry Wood somehow becomes brighter and livelier. Truth be told – when he visits our world, the same thing happens. And I like it.
Blackberry Wood is a magical place, full of wonder. The sun always shines bright; the sky is always the deepest blue; the rain smells of honey. I sometimes fish the banks of Krackatoot Brook with my muse, and we never fail to land trout large enough to feed four hungry mouths. Oftentimes we stroll along the path through Decadory Plain – don’t ask me; he’s the one that named everything – the meadow outside the forest, amidst the two-foot-tall polka-dotted mushrooms that taste absolutely heavenly (waist high on him, mind you) and the “live grass.” The “live grass” is exactly that – green as green as can be, and when you lift your foot it reshapes itself to its former state, as if you were never there. When you walk the path, it seems to wave at you and hum in a friendly hello. Small red roses grow along the path. Nothing special about them; they’re just plain old roses. They didn’t exist in Blackberry Wood, and my muse absolutely fell in love with them when he visited me in the Conservatory of Flowers while I was on vacation in San Francisco last year. Seeing as how they made the little guy so happy, I decided I would take some to him on my next visit.
An odd thing happens when I transport things between our worlds: When I carry something through the window, a trait from one world gets lost and is replaced by a trait from the other. Take for instance the roses; when I took them through, they stayed, for all intents and purposes, just like roses in our world. But in Blackberry Wood, they grow at an accelerated rate just like everything else. I took just two red ones with me last year. If you were to walk the path with me this afternoon, you would count tens of thousands of roses of all different colors.
The fauna is pretty much the same as here. Deer, hare, and birds abound. The only difference is the deer can jump as high as the trees, the hare can walk on their hind legs, and the birds can all fly backward. Krackatoot Brook is abundant with whatever you desire to catch; if you want to catch trout, you will catch trout; if you want to catch bass, you will catch bass; if you want a red snapper or even king mackerel, the Brook will give it to you. There are no dangerous creatures; only peaceful animals reside in Blackberry Wood.
My muse lives in a little mud hut with a turf roof. The whole dwelling is scarcely taller than I, but when I step through the rickety green door, the rooms inside are that of your average house in our world. From the outside, one would think it is but a one-room house. But when you step inside, you find that the number of rooms is countless; they go on forever. Whatever door you walk through, the very room you wish to be in is on the other side. Whatever décor you desire is there. If there were only a way to build such a house in our world!
I could go on and on about Blackberry Wood. There are limits, and I’m still trying to figure out how there are in such a magical world, but pretty much anything you wish simply … becomes. I suppose my muse sets the rules there. After all, it is his home.
I have received three good starts in the past month from my muse, the best one being about a man who doesn’t believe in torture but has to resort to torturing the man who kidnapped his daughter in order to get her back. I was going to use that particular one for this month’s short story installment but got stuck half a page in when Mister Musey Man decided he wanted to play games and turned and high-tailed it back through the window. Perhaps I’ll be able to get the rest of it out of him in time for next month’s installment. Perhaps he will change his mind soon and quit playing these childish games.
Tonight when I sleep I shall travel to Blackberry Wood and pay my muse a visit. Maybe I’ll take a cake with me; he likes cake.