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“C’mon girl, it happens to all great writers at some point in their career”, were the words I was trying to reassure myself when I failed permanently in generating inspiration for my new blog entry about a week ago. It might have something to do with the fact that I am neither a great writer nor experiencing something close to what you could call a career, but not even the ass kissing thought from above managed to trick my mind and convince it that this was only a short-termed state I would get over sooner or later. I was facing the first continuous writer’s block in my life as a blog writer and there was no way out of it.
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Somewhere between tearing out my last hair and jumping off a bridge the thought of my upcoming four-week-trip to the land of the plenty called United States of America kicked me out of the circle of potential suicide bombers back into the company of the happy people I usually belong to. High above the Atlantic Ocean on the way to my final destination Seattle, I said to myself, would I be able to find the inspiration I didn’t succeed to hit upon in the depressing grey of Switzerland’s lowland winters.
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Ela waiting for her Greyhound in Bellingham, Washington: Travelling Obama-Land on the eco-path!
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Well, how wrong can one be! The view out of an Airbus 333 flying a couple of thousand meters above the Atlantic might be wide and endless but not any more inspirational than the miserable taste of the foggy soup Zurich is flooded with three months straight in winter. Not coming across any brainwave as the flight time crawled by, my frustration slowly climbed back to the level where it was before and the nervousness about the blank word file became more intimidating with every other mile this disappointment of a plane got closer to my first stopover Chicago.
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By the time the Airbus landed, the word file that was still blanker than a freshly washed white linen cover and the big female butt next to me that woke up timed with the landing and wouldn’t stop blubbering in the most annoying American girlie slang three octaves higher than what European ears could stand, were provoking me so intensely that I was already willing to fly back to Good Old Europe again before even having arrived at the gate. Eventually approaching the costums check and passport control, my mental conditions were situated right next to total indifference to the lady officer (that according to the name plate on her chest was called Jones) letting me pass this border steeped in legend or not. No longer expecting the inspirational strike at all, this was where it all came down: Handing Jones my passport over the desk, she raised her head and gave me the biggest and warmest smile I ever got crossing any border in this world. “Welcome to the US”, she warbled towards the enchanted me being quite sure an undercover informer would come to arrest her the next second and accuse her of aimless flirting with part-time frustrated 22-year-old Swiss misses.
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I am glad this didn’t happen. It would have been a shame about Jones. She definitely formed the most beautiful flower in the row of the costums officers and much more important, her smile eclipsed the wide and endless panorama high above the Atlantic Ocean by far showing me that it wasn’t the big things we should be after to find inspiration but much more the little gifts our everyday lives offer us naturally. Little smiles that make you get over writer’s blocks, blank word files and trebled voiced American butts immediately.
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The world should contain more Jones! Keep the smiles coming,
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Ela (literally Americanized…)
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