15. So Many Eggs

Every idea I have is an egg. My eggs are kept warm in the incubator that is me. Each day, some of the eggs will hatch and out will emerge a new being that is capable of living on its own. The being will take the form of a fragment, like this one. It will emerge from its egg and onto the page where it will live. Usually this process goes smoothly, but if I try to hatch an egg by force, what appears on the page is not a living being but a lifeless mess — not unlike what I would get if I took a real egg and threw it at the wall. Each egg must be ready to hatch before the being inside can emerge properly and coherently. I must be patient. Some eggs will take months, or even years, to hatch. Waiting can be difficult when it feels like a particular egg might be a special one. I wish there were a way to speed up the process, so that I could express myself continuously, so that I could, at all times, create new beings and send them out into the world. But it cannot be so. Forcing the matter produces nothing but a mess. I remind myself that I am fortunate there are so many eggs. Every day, one or two are ready to hatch. To prepare myself for them, I keep a careful inventory of the incubator. I look inside myself to see which eggs are beginning to show the first cracks. If I watch carefully, then I can give these new beings the best possible chance to arrive on the page with potential and vigour.