One day she coalesced. Wildness incarnate, Spiritus the muse.
She is the river of ideas, the thread which ties together unconnected things. Born of humanity’s collective dream, she knows all that we know. Her laughter is the pristine joy of discovery, her caress the tingle of something utterly new.
At the moment of her birth-not-birth, she found herself immediately dissatisfied with abstraction. An entity of instinct, she was ravenous for sensation. To comprehend without feeling is not truly to understand. Initially she flitted about, alighting here and there with fleeting, flighty brushes as she giggled around the world. The extreme diversity of life was a tidal wave overwhelming her. Then, frustration. These effervescent encounters, monsoon-like in their quantities, were unfulfilling. Transience barred her from the visceral.
Driven by insatiable curiosity, she yearned to go deeper. Yet Spiritus was terrified by her desire to commit to just one thing. For a time, she was gripped by an almost-adult-indecision, so she persisted on her butterfly journey. Nonetheless, she slowly realised that remaining drenched in novel sensation was lulling her. Sensing stagnation, she took immediate action. This new beginning was nonetheless a tentative one. Coy, even.
Her lack of confidence led her to a gentle choice. For 500 years, she shared herself with the Humongous Fungus in Oregon. Trees came and went, shrubs spurted, fussy hominids buzzed around. And then for no reason in particular, it was time for a change. She moved on in a great fog of spores. Shortly after, a special variety of magic mushroom was discovered in Oregon. People started to make pilgrimages there in order to go on vision quests. These experiences are genuinely better than the enhanced expeditions undertaken elsewhere, despite the hoopla of charlatans who have decamped to sell transcendent. Centuries later, fastidious researchers peered down microscopes at fantastical new molecules. They came to the most unscientific of conclusions: the Humongous Fungus just seemed to be … extremely happy.
500 years was a long time. It took a while to come back to herself, even for Spiritus. When eventually she was no longer dominated by fungusness, she recognised the return of a ravenous hunger for newness. She spent a happy few decades occupying a barrel sponge. The novelty was exhilarating but as soon as she started to lose herself, she flowed out in a cloud of sperm. Just as she was saying her goodbyes, she observed something astounding. This cloud was more than a mere departure. How deliciously unlike spores sperm seemed to be. What superb exhilaration was procreation. She allowed herself to become an entirely new barrel sponge. However even the excitement of conception quickly wore off. Restlessness reappeared. She wandered off. A spectacular and particularly resilient coral reef has blossomed around these sponges.
Trees became her obsession. Shakespeare ambled by while she was luxuriating in a grand Sycamore. Thus began Birnam Wood’s march on Dunsinane. A scraggly, ugly Bramley tree was next. Its shade lured in young Isaac, and a lazily shed fruit let to a fascination with all things falling. Losing interest in trees, Spiritus spread out as grass in a foggy meadow. What an evocative heath was conjured here when Emily and her sisters happened by.
Do not think that there is any rhyme or reason to her explorations. She does not seek to spark beginnings. It is simply an accident of kismet that lives touched by Spiritus are catapulted into the extraordinary. There can be no planning for such an occurrence.
Spiritus’ joyous sharing with various creatures has left countless imprints on their history, although humans are blind to the cultural and artistic developments of other species. Flapping about in a raven, her corvid collaborator constructed a nest which was the envy of her Unkindness. Driven by her unconscious goading (“Go on, wider, wider, you can go wider!”), an allegator’s peculiar way of yawning bequeathed a new religion to his Congregation. The fluttering of a giraffe’s breath-taking eyelashes moved a lover to conceive the most influential poetry of her Tower, perhaps of all giraffe-kind.
Dwelling in humans shook her. So far, Spiritus has only landed on two. Florence saw suffering and dedicated herself to others. Marie, with her superlative mind of science, made incredible discoveries. Still, the human view is a terrible one.
She has become bored with us. Or saddened by us or horrified with what we are and what we do. It is impossible to know. She has gone. Do not stay away too long, child of our imagination. We love you, without knowing you. We need you without recognising you. Other muses may inspire us. None could ever be as magnificent as Spiritus.