The Mystery of Inspiration

I cannot explain how my brain works. I don't know if anyone can. I know there's electricity (or perhaps just magic) running around up there, keeping things going, but how that lumpy grey matter gets some of the ideas it does, I'll never know.

Sitting in the Ryman, watching a live recording/performance of Prairie Home Companion and listening to the Dave Rawlings Machine, my brain wanders off and conjures up the image of two girls walking down a sidewalk late at night. One's in flip-flops and the other is carrying her red high-heeled shoes. They're dressed up like they just came from prom. It's the end of the school year and beginning of summer and, really, the beginning of the rest of their lives.

No idea where it came from, but it seemed to be its own little vignette, unattached to any other bigger story (other than the story of our lives) and so I wrote it down as a short story and posted it at my meager little outlet for writers, Stories From Happy Valley.