Looking for a Pencil

 

Most writers - prose writers, song writers, poetry writers, maybe even writers of technical material for all I know – will tell you that sometimes words just rain down out of nowhere, at any given moment.  More often, writers sit in front of a screen, or a typewriter, or a blank piece of paper, trying to think of something to say.  But, often enough to keep writers writing, the words and ideas just appear, and you can’t get them down fast enough.

My particular muse seems to take delight in sending thunderbolts of inspiration around three in the morning.  I’ve read before that three has some kind of significance and is often the hour when inspiration, or ideas come to people.  I don’t know about that, but I know that it’s a common thing for me to come awake at that time with words spinning in my head.  Even if I wanted to, I can’t ignore them.  So, I keep paper and pencil beside my bed so I can jot things down without getting up.  I used to keep pens there, but there seems to be a force field in my house that causes pens not to write when they are most needed, so I switched to pencils recently.  Of course, that brings up a whole new problem – that of keeping them sharpened.  I had a cute little plastic dog that contained a pencil sharpener.  You put the pencil in a hole in his mouth, turned his tail briskly and he did a great job of sharpening your pencil.  His little ears also flapped, which was kind of cute, but didn’t contribute to the sharpening action.  Anyway, my little dog broke not long ago and I keep forgetting to replace him, so I only have a few usable pencils. 

 

The other morning, right around three o’clock, I woke up with some thoughts that I recognized as needing to be written down before I forgot them.  I groped for my paper and pencil, but no pencil or pen was to be found.  I put on my glasses and looked around more thoroughly and still didn’t see anything to write with.  I think Scout steals my pens and pencils.  I occasionally find the remains of one in the floor, chewed into an almost unrecognizable state. 

I got up and rambled through the house, searching for something to write with, while my thoughts grew more and more incoherent and threatened to leave me altogether.  Of course, my activity roused the dogs and they whined at the door.  I let them out and they immediately broke into their alarm voices – something was out there that wasn’t supposed to be.  Just as they launched off the porch, I heard thundering hoofbeats, a little closer to the house than they should have been.  Dimly, through the predawn darkness, I saw a white horse running where no horse should be running.  Horses were in the garden.

Now the search turned from pencils to a flashlight.  There are seven flashlights in this house that I know of.  Not one of them is working, whether from lack of batteries or malfunction.  They seem to be affected by the same force field as the pens are.  I might have said a few bad words.  The only thing I had to light my way to the garden was a tiny little light that I keep in my purse, a thank you gift for my participation as a judge in a 4-H contest last spring.  Luckily, it gave me enough light to make it to the garden where two horses were running around the perimeter, chased by the dogs who knew they were not supposed to be there.  By the time I got the gate open, I didn’t see or hear a horse.  The dogs had come back from the chase and were investigating the tomato plants.  Thinking they might be hiding in the cornstalks, I traipsed around the garden with my tiny light, trying to see where the horse might be, but they seemed to have escaped back into the pasture. I’m fairly sure I said a few more bad words. It occurs to me that I spend quite a bit of time outside in my nightgown, chasing things or hunting things.  Sometimes I think I might as well just stay dressed when I go to bed.  I am always reminded of James Thurber’s stories of his family’s nighttime excursions.

I found where I thought the horses had broken in, propped it up enough to hold until daylight and went back to the house.  The dogs surrounded me, seeking praise for their efforts in sending the horses back where they belonged and we went back inside.  I gave up the search for a pencil and went back to bed. I lay there a few minutes, trying to remember what I wanted to write down, but the words had skittered away, somewhere between the search for a flashlight and the chase through the garden.  I did resolve to buy a pencil sharpener the next day.  Of course, if I don’t write it down, I will probably forget.  But I’m not getting up again to look for a pencil.  There’s no telling what else I will discover and I didn’t need any more excitement.