lost and found

My husband learned one great thing in all his years of architecture school: finish that sketch.
So no matter how bad things seem to be going as you are creating, it's good to complete this one pass. Perfectionism kills. You might glean that one essential bit you would've missed had you crumpled and tossed too early.

So I'm catching up with this old post to see what comes...

The flash of blue caught my eye. Unnatural in the plum tree's burgundy branches. A sparrow had a blue faux feather in his beak, turning his head this way and that so I wouldn't miss it. A welcome pause in writing or doing yoga or whatever had me parked in the studio. He looked like he was eating cotton candy at a state fair, it was that blue.

I must tell you, this was just after GLBT Pride weekend here in the Castro at the end of June. A bit of boa lost in the fun, repurposed to feather a nest.

I imagine him weaving in this neon blue fluff, perhaps among the glitters and spangles already gathered. Perhaps the sparrow was going to trade it for more practical twigs with a raven? Or maybe it's just what we all do, take in something new, see if it can work with what we've got.
And we mix and match and create.

And what would the mama sparrow say? If she's sensible, she accepts the warmth, the softness, how familiar. Woven into the inner part of the nest, to avoid drawing undue attention to her vulnerable young, it just might work. If she's got a gleam in her eye, as taken by beauty as I was seeing her mate, then she might just chirp: Fabulous!

R is for Receptivity

I was sharing with a friend a short story I'd written. She wondered how I'd come up with one particularly striking image. The truth is stranger than fiction. I pretty much wrote down exactly what I'd seen. This specificity helped ground the scene in a way, which I might never have been able to imagine. Creative people know, and we are all creative people, that a large part of our work is to live with eyes and ears open. Our receptivity and the open space we hold are essential to our capacity to synthesize and create.

When we are too full of distraction, there's nowhere for new energy to come in and stay. We become like an overflowing closet. That's when we need spring cleaning, to clear out the clutter in our minds and our internal creative space to allow the energy to flow again. This could mean literally cleaning up our writing space or art studio, sweeping the dance floor.

Or it could mean properly storing our odd thoughts, idea seeds, scraps of dialogue, or stray images. I use my laptop or my journal. Raymond Carver apparently kept his scraps in his bathrobe pocket. Jotting things down, doing sketches, playing with movement and gesture are ways to give things raw form and reassure them they can have your attention at the right time. It gives you something solid to return to.

Once those are given initial form, there's a clear arena for what wants to emerge. Again, it's listening, watching, being curious about what is going to show up. Why is it that I can trust something will come in my creating life, when the same uncertainty in other aspects of my life just makes me anxious? I think it has to do with practice. Some people, especially meditators, know about the comings and goings of ideas and energy and have a broader perspective of nonattachment.

So notice where you are receptive and where you need to clear out some space for new energy to come in.