After considerable internal revelation, it occurred to me incrementally and then as a hammer upon anvil. Greater even than the aroma of bitter coffee on a cold morning, the glimpse of unadorned physical beauty, and even the prickly skin of a glimmer produced by unfathomable music.

It is murmuration of thought.

Much like the massive flocks of birds that exhibit a murmuration, I feel most alive and myself when the zone of previously disconnected ideas becomes a force majeure of a new idea, thought, or joke derived from the deceptive simplicity of words for action.

Too much time raced past me before I realized I did not need to summon or conjure this feeling by force. It is the ‘me’ that needs no provocation.

The click of words and ideas slithering into their proper places makes me as happy as damn near anything.

Reading a book that provokes the same reaction as the first time I read Pat Conroy has honed my pursuit of imperfectionism. None of us are maestros where words or grammar reside. We are mimics. When I find a truly unanchored display of expression, I find myself rereading it, feeling the unnatural groove somehow resonate.

I’ve squandered my delight.

You shouldn’t reduce or amplify because of an imagined audience. A shotgun should be your funnel for expression. Filtering is at best misguided self-censorship, almost certainly propelled by the fear that only ego can bring.

In a perverse display of contradiction, society shuns outliers. But it also capriciously rewards some and there is no discernible reason that separates the criticized from the praised. It must be familiar enough to feel personal, while simultaneously pushing the fringes to generate the feeling of newness.

Ecclesiastes may have been right stating that there is nothing new under the sun, but it is the metamorphosis and recombination of the old that can bring the delight of discovery.