First - dealing with some basic fears

4 am and I'm suddenly, inexplicably wide awake. Maybe its the moon, maybe its the troublesome tooth I've been shushing. This doesn't happen to me, I'm a deep and heavy sleeper. And there's a voice in my head, a bee in my bonnet (except I don't wear a bonnet, not when I sleep anyway). An insistent persistant ring "you gotta start a blog." oh shush now, let me sleep.

I've been suffering from verbal constipation for long time now. I'm a secretive lass. The leopard is my totem. The thought of one more tiny voice in the jostling mass of blogdom has kept me quiet. That and a crippling perfectionism. A 'where to start' feeling. As F says, there's one kind of writers block that comes from having too much to say. But I'm inspired by two brave friends of mine and their funny, loving, hurting, celebrating commentaries (ngorobobhillhouse.blogspot.com and holeyvision.blogspot.com). No doubt my postings will be a lot more introspective, and if there's any poetry it'll be...No. I'll spare you that.

BUT the 4 am voice didn't go away and three cups of organic ground medium roast later HERE I AM> bloody hell.

So, what to expect from these pages if you're kind, curious or kindred enough to click on them?

The musings (maybe sometimes even amusings) of a playwright, environmentalist and reluctant consumer. a bush girl living in the city, a poet-heart trying to figure ways of milking the corporate cow, stubborn beast that she is.

Truth is, I'm not sure yet exactly what niche this little page will fill. But the fact that my morning meditations are out here in the void rather than in silent notebooks is a good start. Just publish, says Robert. Your readers will find you.

SO enough with the apologies.

The muses. There were 9 of them, right? They lived in the springs and wild places. Poets and warblers appealed to them when they were breaking new ground, veering off into uncharted literary waters. There are different myths about their lineage. Some place them as daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. Others say they come from way back, and are daughters of Uranus and Gaia.

Here they are:

Calliope(epic poetry)
Clio(history)
Erato(love poetry)
Euterpe(lyric poetry)
Melpomene(tragedy)
Terpsichore(dancing)
Thalia(comedy)
Urania(astronomy and astrology)
Polyhymnia(song, rhetoric, and geometry)

Something about the way that voice went on at me this morning. Something about the crushing urge I've had these months, to speak up, write, talk, crusade, DO SOMETHING. About plastic bags floating down rivers, arsenic seeping into ground water, the big machine prospectors trawling the Zambezi for diamonds, the dying bees, oh, you know the list, all the things that make us so tired, so very very tired. And I haven't even started on the hurricanes, droughts, squatter poverty that erupts in xenophobic killing sprees... you get the picture and have plenty of your own.

No wonder the muses are fleeing. Run, ladies! Pick up your skirts and head for greener hills. No not that way that's a toxic swamp. No not that way, those springs have dried up!

Shit. Can we, ever so politely, ask them to stay? Can we create some watery crevices for them, some tinkling wells of lushness? Can we seduce them back? Maybe they really really need us.

So I'm going to use this space for that. For every tale of environmental horror, theres some antidote. A success story, a wow, look at what this person is doing, isn't that inspiring. Scraps of beauty, retrieved from out there, to put back in here. Or maybe, if the muses are placated - from in here, to put out there.