The magic inside of the box

The house where my imagination lives has sat immerged in a deep pool of silence over the last couple of months. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find where the stories were hiding. I roamed the halls searching but only found closed doors with no keys that would fit the locks. The attic, which holds the stories of my life’s future looked hazy and offered no immediate inspiration. The garden and woods that insulate and nurture my private thoughts were tranquil as if they were under the spell of winter’s solstice. So, I did what I always do in these seasons of motivational withdrawal…I waited.

As I have built this house throughout my lifetime I have learned that when my muses go away, there is nothing that I can do to find them. We live within an open-ended commitment, my stories and I, and it is understood that they are not there waiting for me to call upon them at my convenience. I have learned that patience is a far better house guest than frustration during these silent periods. All that I can do is wait until the house once again stirs to life and the stories are ready to reveal themselves.

So, time slips by and I was occupied with the day to day events that seem trivial just because I find them too close for comfort to normalcy. I like to say that I like a normal, structured lifestyle, but I know that those sentiments last only as long as it takes to speak them. I prefer unique interactions. Ones that will stand out in my memory and visit me when I am long in years past and short in days left. I prefer incidents that grow into stories. But, the stories were far away. And just when I decided to quit looking for them, the stories began stirring in my imagination again.

A cousin of mine whom, I don’t remember that well, but that remembers me as a child, sent me a box of old family photographs. Most of them are black and white snapshots of recollections that I had packed away and placed on the unused shelves of my memory. But, by looking at the pictures, my mind slowly awakened and I heard the sounds of stories starting to stir in the house of my thoughts. I began to retrace the footsteps that I have walked that have led me to be where I am in life. Blissful scenes from the past flashed into view and pulled me deeper into my history. As I looked at the faces that are no longer within reach, I remembered sitting on porches, under a velvet summer‘s night and listening to the wonderful stories being told, until I slipped into dreams under a blanket of eavesdropping stars. Those times, those stories, are now ready to show themselves.

I am once again, sitting on the front porch…this time at the house of my imagination, and I want to share some of the stories that I have heard from the countless porches that I sat on in my past.

I hope that you find comfort or at least amusement in these tales. But, most of all, I hope that you remember your own times of sitting on the porches of your youth.

Take Care.