When Inspiration Doesn't Strike

This past April, JP was accepted into a graduate program in socio-linguistics. It's a good thing, one of those logical career-building moves that will make him more attractive to potential employers and enable him to transition, if he so chooses, into other industries. The work will be stimulating and provide him with a direction to focus his energy. He will engage in academic discussions with a group of like-minded individuals. There's just one minor glitch: he's still somewhat unsure of what, exactly, socio-linguistics is.

I've heard that such confusion is not entirely uncommon among students in the field of socio-linguistics. Even so, the weight of this fact hit JP with full force last week when he received his first assignment -- a 4000-word paper on the topic of forensic grammar.

"How the hell am I going to write 4000 words about grammar?" he asked suddenly, shaking his head and drooping heavily as he gripped the white plastic safety rings on the train. "What am I going to say?"

"Well," I began, "seeing as you have yet to read any of your course material, there's no way you could know. I believe that the objective is to read the stuff first, and then generate ideas? Once you've actually started the class, it will all become clear."

My words of reassurance had little effect. He seemed stunned.

"Forensic grammar," he muttered blankly.

"Don't worry," I said. "Something will come to you as you go through the course work. Inspiration doesn't just fall from the sky."

I am, of course, a hypocrite.

I'd been sitting at the table for an hour, distractedly tapping my pen and waiting for apercus to appear, like magic (or rather, Godot), on the blank page before me. Nothing. An earthquake in northern Japan sent out tremors that shook the house, and still I sat.

I was supposed to be writing a food essay, a relatively easy assignment, but I'd fallen into a rut the size of the San Andreas Fault. In desperate need of inspiration, I started reading. I re-read stories by David Sedaris and David Rakoff to analyze elements of memoir writing. I picked up old issues of the New Yorker for examples of in-depth reporting. I re-read pieces by Lara Vapnyar to understand narrative arc, and how to build a human story around food.

Then, I started cooking.


Although I abhor waste in the kitchen, I've been a bit slack recently. Odd bits and pieces -- a cucumber here, slices of roast pork there -- had been languishing in the corners of my refrigerator and I took to using them up with zeal. I chopped up sprigs of watercress and a lonely stalk of celery and threw them into a tuna salad. I made a guacamole spread out of half an avocado, some cream cheese and a moribund lime. I fried slivers of garlic with salt-brined, five-spice-rubbed pork left over from dinner a few nights ago and tossed them with pasta, scallions, cilantro, and the last of the Vietnamese pickles I'd made last week. Oinuma-sensei had given us a sizable fresh bamboo shoot, so I boiled it (a time-consuming process that I'll explain later) and coated the slices, along with two grilled eggplants and half a red pepper, in an anchovy and garlic sauce. I roasted an orange pepper and made a quinoa salad with shrimp, avocado, dill, red onion, cucumber and olives. I worked methodically, enjoying the same feeling of satisfaction that a Type A person gets from cleaning out her closet.

As we sat down to dinner with a bottle of fresh and berry-kissed Les Terres du Sud Rose (what else could ever hope to contend with a spread like this?), an idea came to me at last. Funny how great ideas usually come to me after a few glasses of sake or wine.

Inspiration doesn't fall from the sky. It's always around us; you just have to look around to find it. But if all that fails, start drinking.