The Flash

And then, for one glorious, supreme moment, came "the flash". Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn't exactly describe it. It couldn't be described -- not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to anyone else.

 It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond -- only a glimpse -- and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely -- went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it -- never summon it -- never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy, holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilight pane, with a felicitous new word when she writing down a 'description' of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.

I have always felt the flash. I never gave it a name, I never described it to anyone--but the flash was a huge part of my life. It was, I think, what inspired and shaped my insatiable itch for writing.

I have written stories for as long as I can remember. Ever since I could read stories, I began writing them. Even as a young child I remember having the flash--pretty much the only things I can remember of those earlier years. L. M. Montgomery gave my flash a name and a description. As soon as I read about it, I knew that that was what I kept experiencing.  

This describes the flash exactly, almost word for word as I have always unconsciously thought of it. Emily seems exactly like me--it is unnerving at times.

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside -- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond -- only a glimpse -- and heard a note of unearthly music.

The flash must sound stupid to those of you who haven't experienced it. It cannot be described exactly--I could write and write for a million years, and I would never be able to transcribe it into mere words.

I never get the flash for the same thing. One night a full moon causes me to have it. I go weak-kneed and breathless. My heart rate doesn't go back to normal for several minutes. The next day, I get it because of the frosty pane of my window, like angel's breath across the blotched glass. The next day, I get it because of the mist and fog in the morning, or because of the rising sun. In the middle of a writing class I got it, when I read the word "elude." The weirdest flash I ever had was in a science class when I was looking at a hydra through the microscope.

Directly after the flash has left, I feel so lonely, but then the feeling passes and I positively long for a pen and paper in which to write about it. It's like...I have to write. I don't have a choice. My whole being just...agh. Whatever I write that attempts to describe the flash will sound stupid. The thing is, I can't describe it. But it's then, directly after the flash, that I know that I was meant to be a writer.

But that's the weird thing--in all of my old diaries, I found no mention of the flash. It was like it was too sacred to write about.

Odd, isn't it?

The flash is my inspiration, my motivation. It is God-given.

If I had one wish, it would be that I could bring the "gods' random word" that I overhear during the flash, that I could bring that into writing and into the ordinary world.

Oh, I live for the flash.