From Inspiration To Paper

Woke up this morning feeling tired and tried going back for another snooze but couldn’t. For an hour, my mind was doing gymnastics as these lines kept on churning and messing up my daily routine…

秉筆半空字下難
紙上雪白看心煩

Upon trying to doodle the lines with the brush, changes started…

秉筆半空欲墜難
雪白無字看心煩

My mind was blank. Glorious rays of sunshine were beaming down outside and I started reordering the lines,

窗外陽光…
…
…
秉筆欲墜半空難

Again, I was stuck as I lacked the theme… Thinking back to my previous poem, one of the indirect reference to celestial immortals are forbidden to descend to the earth for having any liaison without permission…

陽光不如仙子…

However, this form does not work…

陽光無束易下凡

With this working, the idea of words flowed easily…

1 東君無慮私下凡, Nary a worry for sunlight to steal down to the mortal realm,
2 催盡喜鵲快歸還. Urging magpies to return quickly.
3 雪白紙上待黑發, Snow white is the paper waiting for the black to spread,
4 秉筆半空欲墜難. Brush held in midair and its descent is difficult.

1 The Chinese sun god.
2 Magpies are one of the early signs for spring.
3 Black refers to the soot-like ink used to write Chinese, still used in calligraphy.
4 Before the brush, the ancient Chinese used a bamboo stick as writing implement.

Friday, January 27, 2023