Last night that line from the song Ravens in the Library by S.J. Tucker was stuck in my head. Endless, relentless cycling on four words. Occasionally a few other would sneak in, but always back to those four words.
Setting quiet pages free.
The full chorus is:
My friend bids me come and see
the ravens in the library
setting quiet pages free.
I want to set my pages free. I’m afraid they are gone, fluttered out of my insides into nowhere. Where are my ravens plucking at my insides, ripping out my pages and spitting them out onto the canvas of life before me?
Do I even have ravens? Gah, no ravens, no pages, nothing to set free, just an empty wasteland stretching wide and pointless inside me.
Not that I’m prone to whining and self-pity. Oh wait, that’s just what I’ve done. But it is how I feel. Empty but for jumbled half-form nothings that clutter and confuse my insides.
Dear Ravens, you are cordially invited to enter in, find my pages and set them free upon the world. Or at least the screen.
Ravens? Hello? Am I getting through? <thump thump> Hello?
No answer. Shit.
Just me and my non-existent pages. This is going to make my nano words very hard to come by tonight.
I wish I had more to express. But I am quiet.
And my ravens are napping.
Samantha Herne 