A toddler crawls towards the door waiting for a storm. Out of innocence, curiosity stirs wonderment to why the child is drawn to the acts of nature.

Standing up with open arms poised, the child kissed the door. The door cooled. Prior the child was joyful in salivary hope. Falling back to ground the child cried.

The parents heard crying from their bedroom. Rushing towards the cries direction, the cries got stronger then faint. When the parents arrived nothing was there. They then went back upstairs to see if their child was in the crib. Sleeping peacefully the parents wondered where the cries came from.

Later before going to work, they dropped their child off at day care. Happy, the child went straight to the Eazy oven. It’s his favorite toy while at day care, he shares his imagination with other children by pretending to be a head chef.

At work both parents received a weather advisory notification on their phones. Storms with winds up to 80 mph advised people to stay indoors.

Leaving work early speeding down the highway on their way to the day care; the radio announcer warned that the weather would be severe and to stay indoors if possible. They changed the station to classical music turning the volume high enough to drain out the rain and traffic.

The father reached over and turned the volume down,

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That cry?”

“No…”

When they arrived at day care their child full laughter with his favorite EZ–Bake oven toy in hand. The mother told him to put back. He put the toy down, looked at his mother with arms out. She picked him up. He kissed her. Her face cooled.

On the way home winds began to pick up like the weather advisory said on the radio. The child began to cry. The father reached back trying to calm him, but the cries got louder. Frustrated the mother yells in her mind. The child stops crying. The wind stops  blowing. “Everything is going to be okay,” she said to her child. He smiled. The father leaned back in the passenger seat in relief thinking to himself: “sometimes you have to entreat life with urgency, instead greet life with an open door.” 

This article is published in the General Counsel section of REINK Publications and is authored by Andrew Foster who leads and oversees this section of the platform.

Outside the bathroom window, the wind chime whispers music. Its deep solemn smooth pitch, relaxes the morning. The birds also sing in harmony. Trees wave their leaves blending their voices to support the chimes lead.

As I get up in the mornings my night’s rest infuses with the music played by nature: a repeated dream converted into wonderful music.

It’s dark. I saw a three-storey house in the middle of the street. Walking through the door I went upstairs to the second floor. On the floor a strawberry cake fresh from the oven. I could tell because of the smell. After that everthing went blank.

All of sudden I’d seen a friend of mine on the third floor. We both walked down the hallway through another door. Turning around we seen an old man and other people celebrating his birthday.

Afterwards I ended up in the backyard. It was dusk, I could tell that time moved backwards from night to late evening. A man had his hand stuck in the fence between the links with a nail like gutter spike in his hand. Walking over to help him I looked into his eyes. My intuition told me to remove the nail from his hand to set him free, but if I did the consequences could pose a potential threat that’s unknown to my senses.

Remind you the man was frail. He looks like Pinhead off the Hellraiser movie without the pins.

I removed the nail from his hand. He disappeared. Chaos was filled the air. I decided to leave.

Walking down to the end of the street into the main intersection, people were walking in one direction. You could tell they were being controlled by something otherworldly. A car approached me as if it was turning in my direction. The woman had a dazed stiff look on her face. She put the car in reverse and drove the opposite direction.

As she drove off I heard her say, “nail everything you see and hear.”

When I woke up I couldn’t remember the dream. But as I washed my face getting ready for the day the wind chimes started to sing remembrance to what I had dreamed, nail everything you see and hear, a phrase whispered in my ear to remind me to perform my day with precision and accuracy.

How does the wind speak to you?

What phrases comes to mind?

When the wind sings the rest of nature joins in chorus.

This article is published in the General Counsel section of REINK Publications and is authored by Andrew Foster,  who leads and oversees this section of the platform.

A first draft should be the last draft. Wishful thinking. Writing a second, a third, even a fourth is torture.

Can we think of writing drafts as reflective, an answer to creative questions needed to complete a novel or essay? Maybe. When time is painstaking, a draft perishes.

Whenever you get a break, take a look at your first draft. Is it really without mistakes? If so how many? Are there ideas or some takeaways you can build from? Whatever the case just take a look without judgement. Do not read too much into it. Look. Stare.

As an exercise, I imagine holding my draft up to the mirror (This can be done in real time) with in mind some ideas of what’s needed to move my writing forward. Observing the draft’s reflection I look for answers embedded with self and the space I share at present, whether a bathroom, bedroom, living room etc.

To me drafts are not perishable things rather the need to reshape, refine, with the help of things that’s around me. This when a draft is imperishable. If thrown in the wind it would never depart. Instead it would return in strains and waves depending on where you are on your writing journey.

Reflection becomes prevalent. Power constructs paths known but unknown to a story’s need. The possibility may seem meticulously mundane. But that’s the thing. Life itself is carefully shaped with many parts and probabilities. The mundane is a capable imaginative process to perceive life’s inapt parts. It is the ladder that makes a story worth reading. A piece of life shared to the world even the unknown language of the air, we tend to think She has no existence but we share the same omniscience.

A reflection is not just mirrored images. It’s shared space with time that bends, an art waiting to be manifested by the air space we devalue.

When reflection doesn’t answer it’s because we dismiss the mundane as an imaginative exercise. I would even go beyond and say it’s a way of life. For the unimaginative being, respectfully, lacks creativity the animated building block to existence.

The mundane, then, is pious to our lives: air and space answers the question of how we move in shared spaces, while at the same time teaches us to refine and not perish.

This article is published in the General Counsel section of REINK Publications and is authored by Andrew Foster,  who leads and oversees this section of the platform.

Within the writers mind we strive to bring what inspires us to social mediums. Mediums that are digital in nature, guardians who stand at the gates with algorithmic tridents. These mediated platforms demand our creativity to a point where we post just to post. We tend to forget about if the content is good or if needs a little polishing. We forget to search within. Our inner mediator is there waiting for us to tap in.

My inner medium most of the time drives my inspiration externally, within and without. Internally I’m inspired to write what comes to mind. Medium says, “look around and watch.”

I wake up at 3 a.m. to go on my run. Some days are more hectic than others in terms of breathing. As an asthmatic, the beginning seasons of Spring and Fall, are a mix of pollen, dandelion seeds, dust mites, rag weeds, and sand particles do no justice to my breath nor my allergies. Always I keep an inhaler on standby.

During the winter months’ wind speeds are high, the air frigid and dense. The Spring months is when the air is clear, less dense and in light of pollen.

Even the pollen has a creative place, enabling seeds, fruits, new offspring. The Wind helps the pollens movement to its creative destination.

Back to my runs. When I get into the flow state, it’s as if the Wind clears a path—clearing the air. Spreading my arms like wings while running I can feel the Winds walls. My arms went into airplane mode, feeling the walls on both sides made me feel like the eye of a storm: calm, still, pleasant. I cannot explain the ecstasy of the particular flow state that I was experiencing. What I do know is that I was welcomed in Her realm, the inwardness of beauty taking place in real time which inspires me to look inward.

This article is published in the General Counsel section of REINK Publications and is authored by Andrew Foster,  who leads and oversees this section of the platform.