where to find the MUSE?

What do you do when you are sitting in front of a blank set of pages and have no idea where to begin?
This is one reason I keep my scrap paper bag right next to me - I can just reach in and grab any papers that catch my eye, start to tear and arrange, glue down, add color and GO!
I also read tons and tons (novels, non-fiction, poetry, magazines) and watch worhtwhile movies, because this always seems to get my creative energy going - this page started with an inspiring poem I read in the New Yorker - about a caterpillar slowly inching along, unaware of what the future would be. (I will post this wonderful poem at the end of this entry.)
I also have two awesome daily inspiration books on my desk and it seems whenever I pick up either one and start reading, something touches me deeply - they are "Words to Live By" by Eknath Easwaran, and "Affirmations for Artists" by Eric Maisel.
Also - of course - reading the blogs here and clicking on random chains of links can get me going. I have to be careful of this, though, because this great huge web of internet can certainly lure me to random interesting but unrelated articles, or videos, or images and suddenly I find I have spent an hour looking at some flikr group and my journal sits like an abandoned wallflower patiently awaiting my attention.
So - I hope this visit here is not a side trip for you, but that your journal takes center stage for you today - and the MUSE finds you live and well!



A Measuring Worm
by Richard Wilbur

This yellow striped green

Caterpillar, climbing up

The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack

Of a full set of legs) keeps

Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent

By a sort of semaphore

Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.

Although he doesn’t know it,

He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know

Toward what undreamt condition

Inch by inch I go.