Shoes in the Dryer

You know that sound of wet shoes clumping around in a clothes dryer?  That thump, thump, thump that echoes through whatever room, hallway, or end of the house no matter how many doors are shut?  Ideas do that in my head, round and round, sometimes spilling a story so sensory oriented that I cannot shut my ears to it.  That is what forces me to write sometimes. 

I find ways to deny this force most times, but some times it is too overpowering to deny its time on the keyboard.  It has kept me up when lay my head down to sleep.  It has kept me from being able to concentrate over dinner.  It has forced me out of bed at 3:30am and writing until I had to shower to go to work.  Those times where it has forced me to action have not been enough to establish a habit or a pattern of willingness to compose, so I find ways to dampen that noise.

My earliest memory of writing creatively was in second grade, where I was able to see an entire movie scene falling out onto a page in front of me.
The recognition from few students and teachers validated that my imagination was worth sharing.  The experience has continued to evolve, being able to visualize possibilities in fictional ways in my dome of the world around me, constantly creating the alternate universe of the way things played out. 

Imagination has a way of being suppressed, much to the dismay of those who have read some of the things I actually got written out, mainly family and friends who I have shared my stories with.  It is a back burnered dream to be published, to live the life of just puking my brain out into words.  But the backburner is easily overshadowed by the life that sits on the front of the stovetop.  I find that the smells and the immediate satisfaction of tasting from the front pots and pans keeps me from passing time in front of the computer actually giving voice to the wet shoes in the dryer.  I find any number of excuses.  None of them seem appropriate when my wife confronts me about getting another story done, but then family life manages to get that conversation moved to rear of the cooking top. 

I am not sure what the roadblock is.  The literal space between the back burners of my range and the dryer with the shoes is geographically within five feet of each other in my house (if you were to go through a wall).  But that is what is there between them.  A wall.  A separation.

Mayhap it is that saddest of ironies in my mind, like the snowfall that creates an ideal ski slope making the roads to get to the slopes impassable, is that the creative zainy attentions and distractions I encounter to have to the possibilities of stories makes my ability to concentrate on the task of actually writing impassable.  I live in my off-track head and cannot capture the on-track dedication.

I need to find the metaphor of a hammer to break through that sheetrock and tile to get those two ideas together in the literal world.  Someday soon, I hope, to have the dedication to get to the dryer and remove the shoes before the noise disappears or the shoes dry out too much.