Find the Light

"You return to that earlier time armed with the present and no matter how dark that world was, you do not leave it unlit. You take your adult self with you. It's not to be a reliving but a rewitnessing." 

- from Warlight by Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje wrote, "the lost sequence in life, they say, is the thing we always search out." He felt we need to deal with the layered grief of the world as well as pleasure.

In what ways does the past inform the present?

Do you wish to remove the ink of the past that blends with you?

What learning process moves beyond the should, would or could haves?









Explore incidents you need to repeat in story mode.

Find a way to replace situations. Where will you reweave threads or cut strings?

Choose a narrator to reveal possibilities not considered.

Explore ways to place the past into the present to rewitness.

Use your imagination to find the light.

Close to the Edge

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."  - Kurt Vonnegut

What does it mean to move to the edge? Does it feel frightening?  How does it inspire?

Go beyond a physical edge in your thinking. Consider times you have pushed to the edge of ideas and thought patterns, the meaning of a friendship, a creative project. 

Where did you feel a glow, progress, and possibility?  How did conquering an unnerving situation result in personal growth?

"The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where the dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little woods, the change of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of - and paths threaded with those little flowers planted by the mind." - Katherine Mansfield

Find the fun and fascination by thinking on movements close to the edge.

Read to Write

People I read bleed into my own writing. I'm constantly trying on voices 
and practicing a range of forms. 

- Sue Wootton, author of  By Birdlight

Reading like an omnivore helps a writer develop. Writers need to study fiction, poetry, and essays to learn ways to select words, understand structure and rhythm. Reading in all genres helps to develop your voice. Think about the books you read and why. How do they affect your writing style?

Delve into these questions about your reading life:

Describe memories of individuals who read to you as a child?  List five favorite stories.

Did books you were forced to read in school have a different effect if you re-read them later?

Name books you re-read every few years.

What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn’t?

Do you read a variety of genres?

Recall the last book you put down without finishing and why.

Which book has had the greatest impact on you as a writer? List several if relevant.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how):

What if you could meet any writer, dead or alive. What would you want to ask?

Have you adjusted to e-books?  Why or why not?

What are you reading and planning to read next?

What Lingers

“Where to begin? Do we measure the relaxing of the feet? The moment when the eye glimpses the hawk, when instinct functions? For in this pure action, this pure moving of the bird, there is no time, no space, but only the free doing-being of this very moment -now!”  ― Peter Matthiessen


When observing nature, shapes and textures attract. 
               
      They reveal a moment, haunt us, soothe as they move into the distance. 

Engaging with wonder, 

Our lives balance. 

Colors distract us from our complications.

Images linger.

We feel transported, 
                 enriched, 
                      enlightened. 

Our lives alter.  

Imagination and Economics

Dr. Sally Livingston, professor of literature at Ohio Wesleyan University, studies how the imagination can become economic or how economics is imaginative.

Livingston reveals, "The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines economics as, "The production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. Among many meanings, imagination is defined as, "creative ability, ability to confront and deal with a problem." Combining the two words creates a dynamic that reveals economics discovers meaning through the problem-solving nature of imagination.

Livingston includes the turnip's tale, Repularius, in her book, Subversive Narratives: Fairy tales, Fables and Frame Stories. Written in the 1200s, the tale tells of two brothers. The elder has inherited family land as a result of a new practice where the oldest receives the family riches.

Forced into a peasant class, the younger brother works as a farmer. He grows a huge turnip and asks his wife what to do with such a wonder. She advises to give to the king. The king is pleased and gives the poor brother riches.

When the young man returns to the village, his brother is furious because his brother is now richer. The elder brother thinks that if a lowly turnip could generate such wealth, his own worth will become multiplied. This brother has already begun to think in the new economic paradigm in which wealth multiplies wealth. He decides to give his riches to the King as an investment strategy.

When the king asks his wife what to give as a return gift, she says, the turnip.

The fairy tale focuses on how medieval society used literature to work out the dangers of the new economy with its greed. It reflects anxieties of the time and helps us understand how human beings reacted to the economic changes.

The fable has evolved through time.

In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm rewrote the tale to create a sense of German national identity. The poor brother becomes a farmer not as a last resort, but so that he might prosper.

Even today the turnip's tale exists in various forms in several counties. In one story, the turnip is pulled from the ground where everyone from the father to the field mouse helps. It is later eaten in a community meal.

Livingston feels,"fairy tales do absorb a society's concerns where they are re-created."  She leaves it open for us to wonder how a contemporary version reflects our own economic imagination.

Examples of the turnip tale:

http://russian-crafts.com/tales/turnip.html

http://jimandnancyforest.com/2005/01/the-tale-of-the-turnip/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJdRZBzLzxE

Stimulate Awareness and Creativity

Curiosity

      Revelation

             Eagerness

                   Awareness

                       Timing

                           Imagination

                                  Verve

                                       Intrigue

                                           Travel

                                                 Yeses

Daily, respond to the letters of Creativity to see where they lead.

Think in opposites of your first responses.

Try something never attempted before.

Go for a walk on a different route than usual.

Search for images in pavement, water splots, clouds.

Change routines. Get up earlier. Sleep later.

For five bad experiences, substitute five great ones.

Ask children how to do something and observe their creativity.

Connect a sport to your work.

Try tasting food for its variety of texture.

Choose a color, sound and scent you do not like. Connect them.

Squint and find a different view.

Make a list of five impossible things.  How will you make each possible?

Think about five common items and how they were invented.  Do you have an invention?

Nourish Your Soul

"Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” – John Barrymore

Take advantage of Nature's wonders.

Follow Your curiosity.

Notice shapes, shades and colors.

Delve into the satin and scent of petals.

Endurance: Looking for the Capo d'astro bar

Back in the sixties, the Aeolian Piano Company hired Bud Robbins to write advertising copy. The ad would appear in the New York Times for their grand piano. Robbins knew nothing about pianos and couldn't even play one. He had no idea why someone would spend $5000 (back then) when they could purchase a Baldwin or Steinway for the same amount.

Bud toured the factory for two days. Just before leaving, the national sales manager escorted him into the showroom. The Aeolian piano appeared alongside the Steinway and Baldwin, in an elegant setting.

The sales manager mentioned, "Even though all pianos look alike, ours is heavier. "

"What makes yours heavier," asked Robbins.

"We have the Capo d'astro bar," the reply.

The sales manager asked Robbins to get down on his knees and look under the piano. He pointed to a metallic bar fixed across the harp that bore down on the highest octaves.

"It takes 50 years before the harp in the piano warps. That's when the Capo d'astro bar goes to work. It prevents that warping," the manager explained.

Bud Robbins searched under the Baldwin and Steinway but didn't find the same bar, only a toy-like version.

Robbins asked, "It doesn't go to work for 50 years?"

The manager said, "Yes, that's why the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City uses this piano. Their bar should be working by now."

Robbins went to the person in charge of moving the Metropolitan Opera House to the Lincoln Center, Carmen Rise Stevens.  She told him the only item they took with them was the piano because of its tone and quality that only gets stronger with time.

During his advertising career, Bud Robbins searched and discovered the Capo d'astro bar in all his clients and products dedicated to excellence and endurance.

Everyone has a strength that kicks in when most needed. 

Search for your own Capo d'astro bar. It will enable you to outlast challenges during times of stress.

After you locate your Capo d'astro bar, describe what it looks and feels like when it goes to work.

Have You Noticed?

Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird -
equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums,
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
                                - Mary Oliver

The above poem in five lines describes Mary Oliver's love of life. She notices details.
What if she omitted the first line, would we understand her intent by the title and subjects chosen?

In another poem she writes, "The luna moth, who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a musical notation."

Here she makes a comparison many might miss. She avoids abstractions and sticks to details to let the reader experience her message.

Choose three poems by favorite poets or select your own work. Does the title do enough work in each piece? Do some lines tell the reader too much? Consider how the poems lead the reader or reveal information in metaphor or sensory imagery.

Begin a poem by noticing what you love most in the natural world.  Write the lines to connect an emotional understanding with a discovery.  Let the title pique curiosity about the subject.

Fun of Disorder

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." 

- A.A. Milne

"Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules. Sometimes there are no rules." 

~ Mary Oliver

"There are some enterprises in which disorderliness is the true method."  Ishmael from Moby Dick. Ishmael refers to whale hunting but he also means the art of storytelling.

The word, oxymoron (from Greek ὀξύμωρον, "sharp dull") means a contradiction of terms.

Develop ideas about "careful disorderliness." Let opposites collide. Go jaunty. Get untamed.

Play by creating a meaningful chaos, planned messiness, directed improvisation. Challenge your fun with playful experiments. 

Consider the joy and power of rebellion and creativity. A determination to revolt against the usual may stimulate discoveries in living an imaginative life. find a personal call of non-violent disobedience.

Rise and overthrow a stale notion, overworked idea, or any status quo you've experienced. Your vitality will soar as you shed numbing habits and traditions. 

Extend the rules. Pursue a rebel's jubilee. 

Become:

Open into Imagination

Most of us live in this paradox: we are trailing glimpses of insight, knowing why we are here, and not knowing. We both remember and forget. We are imbued with wonder, and sometimes consumed with loss, from childhood on; we pursue our purpose in a thousand ways.

        - Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These

The Seven Whispers

  Maintain peace of mind

  Move at the pace of guidance

  Practice certainty of purpose

  Surrender to surprise

  Ask for what you need and offer what you can

  Love the folks in front of you

  Return to the world
                 - Christina Baldwin

        

Opening into imagination enables a suspension of judgment. A move into a state of the true self occurs where reverie takes over. 

Fantasies fling us along paths to observe obstacles. We marvel at aspects of self forgotten or not considered.  

The journey enlightens and enriches.

If lost, we acquire new ways of trail-finding while listening to our inner voice of dreams and passions. 

A step off the path merges into possibilities without fears.

Smell the colors, taste the breeze.

Attitude and Awareness provide the guidance.

Rocks along the road lead to wonder and design.

Petal Spelunking

"Nobody sees a flower, really, it is so small. We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.  

Well, I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower."     - Georgia O'Keefe

Delve into the depth of a flower.

Let curiosity and creativity mingle to investigate dimensions of a flower and a relationship. With courage we spelunk into the hearts of both.

How does one move beyond the color, scent and shape?

Does it seem easy for bees and butterflies to
discover the inner channels of flowers? 

What orbits of understanding occur in yellow frills? 

Take time to imagine whirly gigs of orange amidst a sherbert view.

Frills tempt in pink.

Discover the humor in an iris.

Notice the connection of the depth in a flower with the discovery of a similar sensation in a relationship.