The Blissed Experience

This one started as one of those mornings. My absolute favorite weekend or vacation morning is to wake up leisurely with at least half-an-hour in bed to process my thoughts and dreams in quiet, followed by a long morning walk around the neighborhood. After that, a long, hot shower. Then the dessert--soy chai tea with the morning paper. (Do evening editions still exist?)

This isn't a guaranteed route to bliss, but it feels like four of any five blissful moments happen on days that start this way.

Today I noticed something that before seemed entirely random: I get inspired to write at a very particular length into my walk, on a very particular street.

I have four general walk routes, each with a bunch of minor variations. About thirty-five minutes into this morning's walk my mind catches the nuance and word choice of a particular tune's lyrics on the MP3. I'm inspired. I appreciate the lyricist's skill and art. A few moments later, I feel like a beam of flush white light has descended upon me. The Luzca stories I am sporadically devoted to flash before me. I can see myself going home to sketch one of the stories out. I glimpse a future where I spend nights writing it out, see it published and can imagine a girl somewhere reading the story.

It's hard to describe the feeling. Noting the flush white light sensation is a start, I suppose. It's joyously heady. A natural high. Reality seems more fluid. The illusion of time is washed away leaving only a clear sense of timeless eternity unfolding and unfolded all at the same time. Thrilling!

Imagine the book having a life of it's own. The words outline and then form its etheric body. It's breath, it's essence is an animated spirit. It's message is it's soul.

Such an entity crossed dimensions and merged with my body, soul and spirit. It felt like a tantric kiss. Oh, how it warmed my soul. Bliss.

Less dramatic moments of inspiration have occured five or six times on a walk. What stood out today was the realization that it happens on this particular route, on this particular street, but only when the direction I take on the route puts this street at the latter quarter and not the first quarter of my walk. Which made me wonder if it is bio-chemically induced. A walker's version of the runner's high.

An hour or so later, it happened again, but without the inspiration to write. I was outside on the kitchen deck sipping my tea in the spring sun reading the newspaper. Actually, it was the travel section. A write-up on Turks and Caicos islands. I've wanted to go there for a couple years. It's on my list. Perhaps being outside while reading about the island scene, the turquoise waters and the exquisitely detailed fresh-grilled fish eateries inspired the sensation. Again I felt transported into the land of bliss.

And that's when I got curious. Are other people having these experiences and keeping them to themselves? Am I just wired goofy? Something about the world makes me suspect it isn't normal to go in and out of heaven like that.

Funny thing, though. The next few days I felt like crap. And I have yet to turn that impassioned kiss from the muses into a single written word. Bliss without works...biblically ominous.