Sometimes it is elusive and the more I try to find it, the more it slips away.
It haunts me, it comes closer, it gets scared, and it goes away.
Yes, it is inspiration.
Like every week, I search for it tirelessly, when I go for a walk, in the supermarket, looking out the window, the one in my house and the ones in the souls of the people I meet on the street.
Sometimes it comes with a recently read phrase (“My restless solitude” García Lorca), or perhaps with some old quote.
The fact is that this week, it seemed to me that my inspiration was more elusive than ever, so I took a deep breath and went for a walk.
This time I was careful not to use perfume and to wear a long-sleeved shirt, because the wasps are agitated this season, perhaps because of the unusually high temperatures for this time of year and a wasp sting can be, if not fatal, at least painful.
It was not for lack of beauty that nothing moved me, because on the way I came across a pheasant and two pelicans, added to the beauty of autumn, which paints the landscape gold.
But I think my repertoire in that sense is already exhausted.
So, I decided to go down a different path.
And that’s when it happened.
A swarm of wasps surrounded me.
They were fat and wore striped suits. They are different from bees because the latter are yellower, fatter and hairier, due to pollination.
These wasps were aggressive.
I tried to scare them away with my hands, with my hat.
I ran desperately. But it was too late.
I felt the sharp sting, like a burning nail, all over my face.
An intense heat ran through my skin, I could feel the power of the venom furiously running through my body.
I tend to be very allergic, so I ran home.
When I arrived, I checked my face and my arms to see if I could see any signs of the sting, but nothing.
I poured myself a glass of water and ran to my computer with an urgency.
That of writing these lines.
The sting of inspiration can also be lethal.
It can kill with desire, beauty or pain, it doesn’t matter.
PS: and since I was happy to have found inspiration, I’m leaving you the link to a song I love to dance, The Wasps, by Juan Luis Guerra.
Leonor Henríquez (Caracas, Venezuela) Civil Engineer by training (UCAB 1985), writer and apprentice poet by vocation. From her time in engineering emerged her Office Stories (1997), another way of seeing the corporate world. Her latest publications include reflections on grief, Hopecrumbs (2020) (www.hopecrumbs.com) and “The Adventures of Chispita” (2021) (www.chispita.ca) an allegory of life inside Mom’s belly.
Today she shares her “impulsive meditations” from Calgary, Canada, where she lives.
leonorcanada@gmail.com