Inspiration

Inspiration is one of those funny phenomena that refuses, by definition, to be pinned down in source or substance. It refutes the idea of a universal anything, acting instead like a five year kid playing dress up. “I’m a ballerina!” “Now I’m a farmer!” “Look Mom! Now I’m a homeless drug addict who predicts the apocalypse!”

And as hard as it is to identify Inspiration’s fountainhead or to commit its life cycle to graph paper or gelatin mold, it’s all the more difficult to do from a cyclone of frustration. Spinning, thoughts tend to resemble a bulimic girl on the bathroom floor. Finger down throat, regurgitating the day’s grievances. Compulsively rehashing incidents of others’ incompetence and stupidity, and hoping no one walks into the bathroom mid-act. Finger down throat, you picture yourself wearing that hot Prada number, finally free from normal body weight’s slavish shackles. Or in my case, finally free from a world populated by those who ask the same question twenty times and misspell “You’re.” I already look hot in that Prada number. My metaphoric bulimia will not change that. It will, however, keep me hunched over the toilet bowel of Rage hoping there’s some truth to Revelation.

On a diarrhea snowstorm Monday, I was preoccupied by thoughts of the Rapture, finding it impossible to focus my energies elsewhere. It didn’t help matters that I had driven through the mess to go to work on a federal holiday. The office was closed, but being a conscientious, deadline-minded goddess, I had agreed to show up and work on program budgets for the coming fiscal year. So after arriving and enjoying a cup of coffee, imagine my horror to find that half of the expected submissions were missing.

Now, I guess you could carve out a defense for such ineptness - albeit a feeble one - had reminders not been sent out in the form of emails bearing big red fucking exclamation points. These tardos had been given weeks of preparation time. They’d had individually tailored spreadsheets and guidelines and formulas put in their little baby laps. Their little questions had been answered, reports run, and analysis provided - but apparently, timely consideration from one end does not elicit a similar response from the other. Perhaps the worst offense here is that these are no regular tardos – no run of the mill “mommy drank during pregnancy and was a heavy cocaine user” sob story excuses for humans. No, these are well-educated, well-groomed tardos with respectable pedigrees. You’d think such circumstances would have armed them with mental faculties sufficient enough to process the concept of a deadline. But no, that would be far too convenient.

So now I am in this god-forsaken snowstorm, sitting in front of a fucking Windows machine with a cup of coffee and a bad attitude. An atmosphere ripe for frustration. Especially when a substantial part of your bad attitude comes from knowing that Hunter S. Thompson is fucking dead and that you can’t yet follow suit because you haven’t yet left a big enough mark on this horrible planet. What a day.

After drinking more coffee and printing hundreds of pages of documentation collected for a personal research project, my rage returned with a vengeance. Wait, my rage never left, so to say it returned is misleading. I guess it just grew. And in this most unlikely of environments, I was suddenly tapped by the wands of Inspiration and Entertainment and baptized in the waters of Revenge. I think back to a story shared with me by a dear friend. The story takes place in a public school in Norfolk, Virginia and involves a two and half year long mystery. The mystery involves piles of “mysterious” human feces showing up in teachers’ classrooms and administrators’ offices. Turns out the perpetrator was a teenage boy who knew of no other way to express his frustration. Hey, I’m frustrated too! I might not be a teenager in an urban school, but I do know how to poop! And I have a penchant for stealth!

Ahhh, Inspiration and the sweet smell of revenge. Resembling the smell of human waste, to be sure, but a sweet smell all the same.