Water I

Water - inspiration and searching 

    Something so close to us and in the same time so hard to find is the “inspiration”. When we search the meaning of this word, we can find so many colorful puzzles of allusions and explanations. That`s why my advice is first try to find your own meaning. Before reading anything. What is for me inspiration?

   I have a different approach to finding this meaning, with associations " first of all inspiration for me is connected with words like: delight, enlightenment, higher force, spirit (which has the same root), soulful, light, higher mind, higher message, energy, warmth, love, creative energy, excitement, desire, need to create. That are some associations I could think now. We can see they are very positive, mostly connected with light, and a higher force. That means " part of inspiration is inside us, and part is outside of us (or not in our hands). For that little mystical approach of me, I wouldn’t answer the question what is that “outside force”, if that is God or something else. Most important, to realize for the process of inspiration we need it. We can “provoke” the inspiration by provoking 1. something inside ourselves, and 2. provoking this higher force (mind); How that can happen?

   My analogue of water for the plant or flower, is the inspiration; In the way the plant takes the water with its roots, and it flows through its stem and leaves, the same way inspiration comes (as a spirit) through our inner core, then goes to all our body and reaches the mind, or understanding. The process is very similar. We take this water of inspiration and we are full of it, then it should transform into “creating” and energy. Here we`ll observe the basic things we could do, in order to get this water of inspiration. (it`s rarely comes from itself!)

Read intentionally the writings (poems) of others.

(that means the more you read, the more your mind become closer to the idea you want to express yourself! Writings of others give you a good food and essence of your own appreciations and likes, and of you own dislikes. So you can search and find the things you closer to you in writing, and opposite. By “intentionally” I mean here to read not just for pleasure (even pleasure is so important when you read a poem for example), but reading with intention to analyze and review the works of others from a purely critical point of view. Now, as we often are afraid to be misunderstood, sadly we don`t review works of others in a proper way. Writers egos are too sensitive and could take as offend any pointing of the mistakes; But if we want to be objective, it`s much better to review in a critical way- to point out in a good manner, the positive and the negative sides of the text, or simply what we like and what we don’t. If the poem is perfect for us, it simply means we are very critical J

All writings have their weak sides. We have to view them from different perspective, of feeling, intonation, idea, lines, grammar, style. When it comes to poetry, this can be really hard task. 

n.nour *