Inday Learns to Write

She sits under the canopy of an old Chico tree, eyes drawn to heaven in search of the words that have eluded her, drunk with the ecstasy of a passing inspiration.  Her fingers struggle to catch up with the words unraveling in her head, except for the ring finger of the right hand which seems to have a mind of its own.  It keeps hitting the backspace key.


Inday played with words in grade school, flirted with them in high school, and went to bed with them in college.  As playmates, they allowed her to summon images of sunny days and starry nights.  Perfect for the romantic soul with a Peter Pan syndrome.  They made excellent lovers, too: passionate when stoked and persistent when refused.  When deadlines were inevitable and a 3.0 was threatening to spew out of a professor's pen, they would stand before her in all their naked glory and her head would hungrily absorb their every form.  


Once, in high school, she burned midnight candles for Numbers and Equations.  She was wiping the sleep off her eyes when they deserted her--right in the middle of a major exam!  Poor Inday was left to scribble marks on her paper in the hope that the teacher (aka Sir Allan) would recognize her effort.  That quick desertion was the start of their love-hate relationship.  They would meet again for the next two years while she was at university and again when she was taking post-graduate classes.  Every meeting was always a struggle for her, with Math having the last laugh.


Although she is slow with her sentences and paragraphs, words are careful to exercise a saintly patience with her--something that snobbish Math lacks.  She struggles with Coherence too, as with this post which keeps jumping from one thought pattern to another; but most days, she's just too lazy to pay attention to Grammar and Concluding Paragraphs--so she plays with the keyboard some more, and wishes fervently that the ghost of a Holt or a Sheldon takes possession of her creative spirit.


Until then, Inday continues to sit under the canopy of an old Chico tree, eyes drawn to heaven, drunk with the ecstasy of a passing inspiration.