Down the Rabbit Hole

My Spring Muse and "Life of Pi"

The recent influx of warmer temps in the wake of last week’s snow storm has me craving the onset of Spring in the worst way. My daughter needs Spring, she’s busting at the seams to get back to the playground. Yesterday she was joyfully one-footing her Disney scooter around in the driveway. Her cheeks were flushed a healthy pink and her hair was a wild, flowing mane framing her tiny smiling face.

My muse needs Spring too as it has been a cold and dry Winter for me creatively as well. These last several months I’ve spent my free time working on my health, busting through workouts while the creative genius of other writers provide the soundtrack to my torturous elliptical sessions . Yann Martel’s Life of Pi has been an inspiration. He is a compelling storyteller. He writes with depth and humanity and humor. He has at turns made me laugh, cry and lose myself in the vivid colors and rich textured of his world. Martel has joined the ranks of my favorite authors…second only perhaps to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an absolute master of the craft. Marquez’s “Of Love and Other Demons” is a testimony of how writing can be both incredibly beautiful and painfully visceral all at once. It is a book that has stayed with me as I expect Martel’s “Life of Pi” will. These are “writer’s writers”, a borrowed phrase that is absolutely fitting of authors like these. I learn something about my own limitations and abilities with each chapter I digest. I can only hope to build such worlds and create such characters one day. For now, I remain an ever- hungered, ever-seeking novice, constantly fine- tuning my palette of appreciation for the written word.