Hit over the head

Twice I have had my scalp split open. I still have a scar on the back of my head from one. This is one of the reasons why I wear my hair long. The other is to disguise the size and shape of my enormous square head.
So now you know.

After the accidents, I tried to write poems searching for a metaphor for my life. Why did I want to get inside my head? I'm not sure my poems ever revealed anything more than the vast disarray of my daily thoughts.

I think of this poem by the brilliant Stevie Smith:

A Debutante

I cannot imagine anything nicer
Than to be struck by lightening and killed suddenly crossing a field
As if somebody cared.
Nobody cares whether I am alive or dead.

Beyond the petulant voice of a isolated teen (at least that's what I think), there's the line "Than to be struck by lightening and killed suddenly crossing a field."
Struck by inspiration, like lightening; the force that kills everything ordinary. The focus becomes the inspiration, the extraordinary.

The car accidents--unfortunate events that happened over twenty years ago. I am fortunate to be alive. From time to time I am struck, as if by lightening, and the ordinary world dissolves away.

Perhaps that is why I wanted to get inside my brain; I wanted to know inspiration works. I wanted to find a way to control it. Or, perhaps, my injuries were simply the results of two car accidents, and, as a writer, I'm looking for meaning where it cannot be found.

I can't help it.