Staring out the window and dreaming of dreaming.

People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball.
I'll tell you...
I stare out the window and wait for spring.

--Rogers Hornsby.

Staring out the window: malady or magic?

I think staring out the window is part of the magic of humankind. Staring out the window, or at the fireplace, or at the surf or the back lawn...it's all the same: fertile terrain for the imagination. (That's why staring at the television doesn't do it: there's no room for the imagination, we are the passive recipients of sound and images conjured up by others' imaginings!)

I think there should be 15 minutes a day  devoted to staring out the window...for every schoolroom, office, factory, hospital or home. Our brains need time to muse, digest, reflect, and to create--time to take facts apart and reassemble them in day-dreamy disorder, then reorder. Then, it's time bring in something else from another realm: stir, taste, repeat!

Look what happens when we dream--some is rehash, but some is strange, new, alien--I dream of faces and places I know I've never seen, of events that never occurred, of magical transformations, and of possibilities that would be inconceivable (yes, that word does mean what I think it means!) in the waking state. I'm reminded of the famous solution to the structure of the six-carbon molecule called benzene: there was no explanation for how six carbon atoms could occur together with only six hydrogen atoms. The chemist Kekule was baffled. No way. Didn't add up. Period. Until...a dream, of a snake with its tail in its mouth, a dream that worked its way into his waking thoughts--sha-zaam! The benzene molecule is a ring! (Okay, it's a geeky illustration. Tough! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Kekul%C3%A9 )

Once I dreamed of an Englishwoman who spoke fluent Latin; no, effort-less Latin. She was a regal lass with dark hair, tall and slender and beautiful and utterly unaware of the power of her presence. This lady WILL appear in a story, but, thus far, she's only appeared in a dream. But, she is going to come to life and speak in the story that I shall pen. It'll be new, alien, and--buh-bye, gotta go write her into existence.

From dream to reality--10% inspiration. 90% perspiration.