"Inspiration" Think of those Chinese monks' tales: years of struggling in the zendo, then the clink, while sweeping up, of stone on stone . . . It's Emily's wisdom: Truth in Circuit lies. Or see Grant's Common Birds and How to Know Them (New York: Scribner's, 1901): "The approach must be by detour, advantage taken of rock, tree, mound, and brush, but if without success this way, use artifice, throw off all stealth's appearance, watchfulness, look guileless, a loiterer, purposeless, stroll on (not too directly toward the bird), avoiding any gaze too steadfast; or failing still in this, give voice to sundry whistles, chirp: your quarry may stay on to answer." More briefly, try; but stymied, give it up,   do something else. Leave the untrappable thought, go walking, ideas buzz the air like flies; return to work, a fox trots by -- not Hughes's sharp-stinking   thought-fox but quite real, outside the window, with cream-dipped tail and red-fire legs doused   watery brown; emerges from the wood's dark margin,   stopping all thinking, and briefly squats (not fox, but vixen), then moves   along and out of sight. "Enlightenment," wrote one master, "is an accident, though certain efforts make   you accident-prone." The rest slants fox-like, in and out of stones.