CREATIVITY UNLEASHED

I believe I have been a writer all of my life. I started writing poems when I was twelve and have kept a journal since I was in high school. As tongue tied as I can become, writing appealed to me because I could always take the time I needed to find just the right word to express myself. Talking in front of people exposed my word retrieval problems...I was clumsy and easy to embarrass. Death was my first catapult into metaphor and the poem I wrote was about a lunar eclipse and the untimely death of a friend when I was 12. The poem was actually read at the funeral and although I was not present to recieve any attention for it, that quick success encouraged my efforts and began a lifelong love of metaphor and word play. As a child becoming adult, I managed to take the attitude of play out of the equation and turn writing into something motivated by duty and work. I always have a sense of being held back...held in check...held on a short leash...and pratice practice practice is an exersise in spiritual discipline. Early experiences with elementary teachers taught me to fear the open white page. Art lessons were actually lessons in following directions and doing what we were told...not in indulging our childlike creative spirits. My second grade teacher shook me till my shoulders bled and locked me in a supply closet when I put a sun on my Easter picture...then she made me walk around the room holding my picture up for all to see. She basically snuffed out the light in my little artist heart and I've spent the rest of my life trying to get that radiant spirit back. I never face a white page without anxiety and the need to encourage myself to go ahead and let it rip. When we moved to Maine and began life in a ski resort town, and I began to work on improving my skiing...I realized that I carry the same fear and anxiety to my skiing and to skiing on new terrain. I became a yellow crayon on the white trails in my imagination and writing with a gel pen resembled the sensation of skiing and I would pretend the pen was me skiing. Suddenly, my concept of creativity opened up. I've finally discovered that creativity is not just about writing or painting or music, singing or acting or performance. Creative doen't necessarily imply using art media at all really. A person can be creative by making an unusal choice on any given day...or by linking 2 unlikely things together or by using something in a new way. That openness comes from an attitude of play because play is light, happy, fun. If one sets one's mind to working at something...there is a serious adult frame that goes around the whole picture. Work is serious. Work is something that needs to get done. Work is headed toward a particular outcome. Work beats a slow path while play allows you to leap.

Sadie has been a great teacher in the effort to reclaim play in my life. Now that she is older and has learned to come when I call, I can take her on long walks in the woods where she can enjoy the freedom of unleashed exploration. I trust her to come when I call.All the practice of puppyhood has brought us to the possibility of enjoying our freedom together. Now that she knows how to heel and stay near, I can give her rein and let her explore her own sequence of choices. I talk to her aloud in the woods. Often I talk out loud to the trees and often, I see ephemeral images of ghost animals or people in the woods. I recently read an article about creative people being weird...square pegs in round holes...often doing what they do despite feelings of not belonging anywhere. The writer of the article frequently mentioned that creative people report hearing voices, seeing ghosts, communicating telepathically and having other strange perceptual experiences. I thought...how strange. I was under the impression that most people have these odd perceptual experiences and have learned to regard them as pretty normal. Reading that article made me wonder about the effort of science to explain everything and prove everything. So much of life's mystery and imaginative play is lost in the testing and lableing and explaining and proving.

When Stephen and I first got together, we had lots of conversations about the word "Weird". He'd call my thinking weird and I told him to replace the word with creative. Whenever he called me weird, he had to say the same thing only change the word to creative. I would do the same when he caught me calling him weird. It helped us both rise above what external people thought of us because we had begun to change the language we used about ourselves. The same tactic can be used with abilities/disabilities. Sometimes a single word can change the way we understand ourselves.

I need to have the wild around me...it is the hole this peg fits in. In the woods, I am at home with my nature. My spirit is unleashed. I move happily into the little hobbit holes I spot as I walk. I imagine myself at home with the chipmunks and tree gnomes and I find the time and space to be with the rocks, the trees and to listen to the shivery chatter of the brittle oak leaves knocking together in the soft wind and smell the layers of earthy decay. I've always needed the wild and I craved it from the time I was a child and we had to move to Salem after living in the more rural Beverly Farms. I need to have the possibility of a bear stealing my birdfeeder or the chance of spooking a deer in the woods. I need to hear the coyotes howl and the winds scream through the trees. I need to hear the popping trees in January and
imagine the bony tree limbs reaching out for the love of the sun. I need to listen to the music of the wild water running down through the moss covered rocks...not for anything other than it makes me happy and it gives my imagination a place to play. A space of wilderness is the empty space, the white page, the place before buildings and pavement and wires and lights...the state of grace before pollution and industrial pillage. The wilderness is the origin and the source of hope for planetary healing. So if you feel like a square peg trying to fit in a round hole...go walking in the wilderness. Perhaps you too will find a hobbit-hole awaiting your imaginary elf-self and the fit will be perfect.