Inspiration Ain't No Dime-Store Booty Call

If there is something I've learned over the 30-some years I've sullied this planet with my presence, it's that creative inspiration is not your average mistress.

You see, your average mistress is just a 7 digit SMS away, always lustily awaiting your poetic summons. "Motel 6 rte 53 7pm smel good". As you pull up to that grungy roadside inn, 10 minutes late and whiffing of stale rye, you can be certain that your average mistress is patiently waiting inside, ready to get the business. 25 minutes and one step closer to hell later, your average mistress will blissfully watch you leave, reassuring you all the while that she really doesn't mind taking the city bus to meet up. It's only one transfer, and besides, it gives her uninterrupted time to think just of you.

But inspiration... inspiration is a much different creature. Inspiration flits around the edges of your mind all day, but never heeds your call. Inspiration does not arrive at a time of your choosing, but rather taps incessantly on your bedroom window at 2:45am while you lay beside your gently sleeping betrothed. At times inspiration will disappear for weeks, even months, nowhere to be found. There is no note, no phone call, no "Gone to Cancun, back next week with pics" text message. Simply an empty void where something important should be. No, inspiration ain't no dime-store booty call.

So, what to do when inspiration comes knocking, awkwardly thrusting it's heaving bosom of creativity in your direction at the most unworkable of times? Do you risk turning it away, spurning the unique joy and passion that only inspiration can provide, perhaps not to see it again for what may seem an unlivable period of time? Or do you drop what you're doing, hand your 5 year-old child a $20 bill and say "I've got another one of these for you if I don't see you for the next hour", and harken the call of your supple muse?

Ultimately, it's your call. But perhaps the most vexing attribute of inspiration is that even when you welcome it and embrace it, even as you relish awash in the waves of sheer beauty emanating from it, and often just as you are certain you are experiencing the most climactic of surreal epiphanies, even with all that, time and again it will simply vanish, and your handiwork is left unfini-