Creativity Closet: The Why of It

 

Why create a Creativity Closet? Especially if one doesn’t believe that one is particularly creative? Imagination exists for lots of reasons, but it is the key element in growth and the forward movement known as progress. If we can imagine a thing, we can often find a way to create or do that thing.

Many of us resist the idea of our own creativity for numerous reasons. The first one might be the fear of failure, or of appearing foolish or untalented. We live in a world that is far more interested in product than process. What is the point of creating something that no one will use, or maybe even want? The process is often work and takes time as well as energy. The thought that others might not see value in our product can stop us cold from even beginning.

The process is a learning experience, and as such has far more value than any product produced. Fear of making a mistake, doing it wrong, can block not only the process but whatever might be learned within its boundaries. I am not just speaking here of learning how to make something, although that is one of the ultimate goals of the activity. There are life lessons to be learned and sometimes those lessons can’t be obtained in any other manner.

Very often, the creative process entails a repetitive action, something that has to be done again and again and simply takes time. That repetitive action, whether it is polishing, gluing, cutting, or whatever, allows the mind to roam free while the hands are otherwise occupied. It often becomes a form of active meditation and, it is during those periods when the subconscious can come forward and make connections.

I color with markers and artists pens. But, it is while I’m engaged in coloring that I have been able to piece together new perspectives concerning my personal life and experiences. The colors I choose often bring certain subjects to the fore and I am free to roam through those thoughts and feelings while thus engaged.

I obviously engage in journal writing on a daily basis. But there are times when I set out to write just to see where the words will take me. Writing is a creative process and as such employs that repetitive pattern that frees up my thought processes, often allowing me to find answers I didn’t even realize I was seeking.

I have written here about another new activity: doodling. Constructing an image one stroke at a time. Making lines and then connecting them in unusual ways to simply see where they will end up. It is both relaxing and quite satisfying, but also provides space for the connecting of thoughts and feelings that might not otherwise happen. Zentangles are fun, and no, they do not all turn out beautifully, but that isn’t the purpose behind doing them. They are actually meant to encourage creative flow and they do just that.

The most important reason for creating a Creativity Closet is to open the door to new possibilities. Letting ones imagination have free rein can offer new experiences and the material that dreams are made of. Far too many of us walk around angry and frustrated, wondering if this is all there is and why that is so. Never knowing that we ourselves might be the only thing blocking new experiences and adventures. If we think of ourselves as chained, held captive by our circumstances, that is exactly what we are. And no one can change that except us.

If that is our bottom line, others can make suggestions until they are blue in the face, and we will immediately find reasons (excuses) as to why those suggestions are impossible to fulfill, or follow through on. So it is up to us to open those doors that lead to our own personal freedom. It may take time and only occur in small little steps, but each step will take us farther and closer to that place we ultimately want to be.

A few months ago, I realized that I had very little mobility and it was utterly frustrating to know that. I began to think in terms of how I could change that reality. I started out thinking in terms of a scooter that would allow me to at least reach the stores and restuarants that are within close proximity.

Within a few hours, I will be registering the first car I have owned in five years, because my circumstances have changed. But, and this is important, those changes hadn’t really taken place in the mindset I had held before they occurred. That sounds like a tremendous leap in reality. It wasn’t. It occurred one step at a time while I was coloring, writing, and doodling.

The writing I do may never be more than my blogs, and may never be read by more than the few individuals who accidentally find this site. The images I create in color and with doodling may never find value in the eyes of others, but they have certainly produced far more than I could have dreamed before now. I now have the mobility I yearned for and lots of plans on how to use it. I no longer feel just this side of caged, nor am I dependent on the whims and schedules of those around me.

I am free to go where I want, when I want. What’s more, I am free to engage in other creative activities I, not that long ago, thought were utterly hopeless to even consider. My doodling and coloring had purpose and drive, a function I hadn’t considered possible. I thought I was just keeping myself busy so I wouldn’t explode because I felt so trapped. My Creativity Closet has become a priceless commodity, a treasure trove of ongoing possibilities.

It has changed my life and my awareness in ways that nothing else could. That is the why of it, its purpose and function. Have you opened that door to all of you possibilities?

Final Accounting: 2008

 

Today is the last day of this year, 2008. I have spent some time, looking back on the days, weeks, and months that are passing into my personal history, perhaps better labeled herstory. This has been an incredible year, an extremely good one. Looking back on it has been a mostly satisfying pleasure. My life has changed, and I have changed with it. Challenges met and overcome, dreams fulfilled, and new avenues of experience risked and met with success.

I started the year in a sort of fog, settling down in front of the TV with an unconscious, but strong inner urge to become just another couch potato. If I wasn’t watching the boob tube, I was reading yet another murder mystery, completely oblivious to the fact that I was well into committing my own form of soul murder. I wasn’t writing at all, the pen and its demands had been given up for activities that were far less demanding of any thought, let alone process.

Then came American Idol and David Cook. Bless you David. I know that you don’t know me, don’t have a clue what you did for me, but I will always be grateful, none the less. You got me up and out of that overstuffed rocking chair and back on the page. Back inside this thing I really love to do, and am quite good at. But, and this might be the most important part, I was back in a very new and different way. Awakenings are wonderful things, or can be, if we allow them.

Then the doctor diagnosed the beginnings of diabetes. What a shock that was, even though I knew that I was an excellent candidate because my father had had it and my oldest daughter has it as well. New regimens: diet, and daily blood sugar counts. Although I don’t enjoy poking myself everyday, I have done it, without fail and reaped many rewards. A new awareness of my own physical reality, a weight loss that continues and has allowed me to drop five sizes in my clothing, and a much deeper respect for my own ability to follow through and stick with it, staying inside the present moment.

I started counseling and have found it to be very satisfying as well. Letting someone else see my emotional well-being, or lack of it, has given me new perspectives on most of what has happened over the past year, as I’ve listened to an objective voice that is constant in its support and ongoing encouragement, a voice that often asks those questions I don’t even consider, or see, as important.

I began blogging in June. All new territory and one that led me here, to this site, and a deep committment to continue to explore my own personal space while encouraging others to do the same. And one that also led me back to my first love: poetry. I have written well over sixty prose articles on this site, but have also written a great deal of new poetry, exploring and finding new ways of expressing myself. Allowing myself to be prompted and challenged in several different directions.

That, in turn, has also led to the establishment of another new blog: 
 http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com/ which will be centered around my poetry and the music that feeds me. I will post there for the first time, tomorrow, on the first day of the New Year. My first post will be titled A Woman of Color, and inadvertentlycelebrates yet another new endeavor I have stumbled into. Coloring. Laying down colors and watching the patterns come alive beneath my fingers. It is closely associated with laying down words and watching the patterns come alive with meaning and awareness. I would hope that you come and take a look and drop a comment or two.

Along with all these new disciplines and activities which constantly challenge me, I have recovered a number of old friendships and deepened each of them, so that they feel new, but also have the comfort and strength of familiarity. Each one has meant a deeper commitment to my own life and has afforded me the opportunity to re-establish this person I call Elizabeth, that one who was getting lost in that overstuffed rocking chair in my living room (I haven’t watched more than a few hours (maybe four or five total) of TV in the past three months, and have read only two and a half books in that same time period).

I have also had the pleasure of creating several new friendships, here online. Meeting diverse new individuals and finding common ground is exciting and challenges me in other and different ways. I have been able to teach, encourage, and to learn, all at the same time, and with the ease of doing so from my own comfortable little space called home.

All in all, this has been a year of awakenings on many levels. It has led me here, to the beginning of a New Year that is filled with the brightness of hope and even more opportunities to learn and to experience. I was recently prompted to write about daring to dream, and found that I couldn’t, didn’t seem to have a feel for the topic and came up blank with no more than fading dribbles that went nowhere. Maybe, because so many of my personal dreams have found fulfillment in this past year, and the very real fact that I am now living inside of those dreams. They are my reality, continuing to feed and nurture even more of the same and bringing them to fruition. There is no daring involved, there is only new and deeper life and meaning.

Holes in The Soul

 

She pictures the broken glass
pictures the steam
pictures a soul
with no leak at the seam
                                       __Peter Gabriel
                                            Mercy Street

Several months ago, I told my counselor about a dream I’d had many years ago, in which I was shown a piece of fabric with assorted sized holes cut in it, and was told, in the dream, that I was looking at my soul. I told her how, with the help of my daughter, I’d found a way to change the end of the dream by mending the holes in the dream fabric. It is an imaging technique I created to deal with dream material.

As far as I’m concerned, dreams are messages from my subconscious mind, and they pertain to my life, how I am traveling through it, my emotional states, activities I’m involved in, and yes, even the state of my soul. Those messages come in a different language than the one used by the conscious mind. They are not conveyed in logic or language, so much as in connective links of images that I can associate with my own person.

In the dream, someone threw that piece of material in a dark corner behind the front door, before leaving and walking out of my life. After picking up the piece of material, holding it in my hands,  and seeing its condition, I awoke slowly. As I was waking from the dream, becoming consciously aware, a voice in my head simply said, “That is your soul, Elizabeth.”

My soul was in pretty bad shape. Dust clung to it, from that dark corner where it had been tossed and the assorted holes, cut through most of the material made it appear as flimsy as waste material or cheese cloth. The semi-conscious voice and its alarming message still rang in my ears. This was serious business.

At the time, my oldest daughter was living with me, and I immediately called her into my room and related all of the details of the dream that led up to its ending and that deep male voice and its disturbing message. We had worked out a technique to deal with dreams, so she gave me very simple instructions, “Describe the material, see how it looks in your hands, just as it appeared in the dream. How does it appear, feel, and how does its appearance makes you feel now as you look at it?”

It didn’t make me feel very good. My soul was in tatters. She then asked me what I thought I could do about it. I told her, I obviously couldn’t toss it in the garbage, it was my soul, for goodness sake. I would have to figure out a way to repair it, mend it, if possible. She then asked me to close my eyes and see if I could see myself doing that and tell her what I saw. I did.

I saw my hands smooth out the material, then go in search of another fabric that would at least match the square I was holding. I found one with a particular pattern and in a contrasting color and then watched my hands pick up a needle and thread and begin to patch each hole separately until they were all mended. Satisfied, we both went on with our regular routines.

What we did, was respond to the message inside the dream, actually changing the end of the story in the dream to one that was far more satisfying and that made sense of the story. We did that in the same language that the dream had suggested, using the images from the dream itself.  In other words, we gave back images that could be easily understood within the context of the dream and could be similarly interpreted, and thus, acted on.

Not every dream image is as easily interpreted as these were, nor do they come accompanied by a waking voice that clearly identifies them. I am using this dream as an example because all of us, in the course of our lives, do encounter differing degrees of pain. And the pain that we experience does cut and rip holes in our souls. To be whole and healthy, we need to mend those holes, or might be in danger of tossing our souls in the garbage.

We mend those holes by finding a way to express our story. Writing it down is one way, painting it, sculpting it, dancing through those feelings, carving them out in wood, or other materials, are just other forms of expression. There are innumerable ways of expressing those things that left unattended will, and do, poke holes in our souls of well being.

The subconscious mind is a wondrous thing. But it is also a wilderness to a logic oriented mindset. It does have a voice and will speak through dreams, both waking and sleeping. When I later went back and explored the material I had chosen to mend the fabric in my dream, I found more and deeper connections in the pattern on that material. It all pertained to me and the manner of my life and experiences. And all of this took place spontaneously inside my own imagination.

I did not set out to find a physical solution to the message within the dream. I found an image that went directly back to my subconscious mind and simply went on with my life as I knew it. In the years since then, I have discovered many ways in which to mend those holes. Each and every one of them is a creative element meant to heal and strengthen the broken places inside of me. That is what creative energy is, a healing agent built directly into the system.

As I stated before, our subconscious mind is a wilderness, and within that wilderness are the living, breathing, Wild Things born out of our pain as we experience our lives on a daily basis. I wrote about one of mine in my last blog. The imagery I learned how to use thirty years ago, is another element of the subconscious mind and it is what I mean when I speak about waking dreams. One uses the exact same equipment to visualize as is used to project dream images on the screen of the sleeping mind.

I am not speaking only of physical pain. We also experience mental, emotional and spiritual pain. Obviously my spiritual pain was deep enough that it spoke (maybe yelled) at me through a dream in which I was graphically shown the holes in my soul. By changing the end of the dream, incorporating a healing solution, I changed the end of my own story. The individual portrayed in the dream as walking out that door, has now walked back into my life, years later, and I can greet her with a healed and intact soul. That is what I call good therapy. And my counselor agrees.

Back To The Wild Thing and A Little Bird

 

Although my last blog looked to be a departure from the things I have been writing about (Wild Thing), it really wasn’t. Go back and reread the words to that old folk song that introduces the previous article. The little bird that is its subject is just such a Wild Thing. In my mind, the little bird is a hummingbird. The hummingbird is forever in movement, and it is the symbol of joy. Joy dies, fails to flourish in captivity. Restraints render it less than free, exuberant, and radiant with its genuine color and flow. Joseph Campbell, the leading mythologist of this past century, has written that in order to know true fulfillment and happiness, we must follow our bliss. And again, one must see that in the humble little hummingbird and its movement. It is constantly propelling itself toward what it needs and that which will sustain its very life.

Should we be any different? There are connective links in each of our stories, we simply have to find them. Find and acknowledge them, then possess and celebrate them. That is following our bliss. That is propelling ourselves toward what we need and what will sustain the lives we choose to live. I can remember the startled shock I felt the first time I realized that happiness wasn’t something that just happened randomly, or occasionally, in my existence. It was something I could and did choose at any given moment. What an extraordinary revelation that was. As well as extremely difficult to hold onto, given some of my circumstances. But, I remember thinking, if that revealing thought held any truth at all, then it was one well worth pursuing.

That was the beginning of my hummingbird flight. I am a Seeker, curious to a fault. And the trail I have left can be found inside of my journal pages and the poems I have written, as I flitted from one topic of interest to another. There was Mythology, especially personal mythology, Symbolism, Dreams, the human psyche, the Soul and Soul Work, inner dialogue and Imaging. Because of circumstances within my own story, I wanted to know how the brain functions, and was fascinated by Psychology. And through all of that flitted my love of language and curiosity about words, meanings and definitions. History and how it pertained to the individual as well as the whole of Society, and many other tangents and paths along the way. To be honest, the list continues right up to today and my present fascination with color and its meaning and flow.

I have followed my bliss and yes, have found happiness within that flight. Far more happiness than I could have imagined when I was sitting there waiting for some magic miracle to fall into my hands or lap. And yet, there still resides within me the awe of the child that I was, the believer in magic that I have become. We make our own magic. We do have that ability and that choice.

In my last writing about the Wild Thing, I created a young boy as an example. Through no fault of his own, he chose to lock away a piece of himself, to silence it, to suppress it, to dismiss it and cut it out of his existence. I have no desire to leave him there, struggling to contain what needs to be set free. That is his hummingbird, his Wild Thing. Instead, I would encourage him to sit down and attempt to learn the language that Wild Thing speaks. To make friends with it. And most importantly, to learn how to listen to what it is trying to tell him. It is a genuine and natural part of his person. And it is trying to tell him something about himself. He may have formed a habit of not hearing it, but habits are learned, and as such, most definitely may be unlearned.

I would tell him that wild creatures are often shy, so it will take a lot of patience. That he must not go to the place that Wild Thing inhabits with a cage or weapon. He must not try to capture it, but with sincerity, must truly just go with only his senses and wait. That Wild Thing is also curious, it will come to sniff and to learn what has entered its space in order to discover if this new presence is friend or foe. The boy, now man, might want to take a pen and notebook along to keep track of his progress and to note the environment he has entered into. It all helps. Who knows, he might find himself writing a poem about the tree where he sits, leaning back and waiting.

I can only promise him one thing. If he is steadfast, eventually that Wild Thing will make itself known. Will begin to speak, perhaps as no more than a whisper in the boy/man’s mind. It must, for it is self calling to self. It may speak of anger and hurt, the pain of being locked away and how that has resulted in a depth of mistrust. Mistrust that only the boy/man can change through his steadfastness. For it is the boy/man who locked the creature away and must, therefore, seek its forgiveness and prove his worthiness. And within that process earn and reap the rewards of connective links rejoined as they were always meant to be.

Then, and only then, will he be free to follow his bliss, perhaps truly happy for the first time in his existence. Free to find and follow his own dreams, express his own story, make his own defintions and free to walk upright, or even launch himself into his own hummingbird flight.

That Other Kind of Dream, Or The Airplane Lady

That one that has nothing to do with sleeping, but everything to do with our waking moments. Our bag of expectations, wants, and desires for our own lives. Those secret plans for our future, sometimes so secret, we aren’t aware of them ourselves. Oh, they might occasionally surface, but we dismiss them for wishful thinking, or just plain fantasy. We often ignore them, telling ourselves that they are meant for someone else, someone far more capable of actually living inside of them, realizing them, bringing them to fruition. We dismiss them as though they are nothing more than fluff. But are they?

Many, many years ago, while I was working as the General Manager of a new/used Bookstore, a woman came in and asked if I knew of two particular books. It turned out that she had already read them and simply wanted to discuss the effect they had had on her life (individuals who work behind the counter in a bookstore often find they also play the role of a neighborhood bartender). What she really wanted was to talk about her dream and how far she had come in bringing it to fruition. As she told her story, I was amazed at how far away from my own dream I had drifted.

The amazing part of it all was that I had read the two books she was asking about, but somehow hadn’t put it together in the same manner she had done. She spoke about using her time to prepare herself for that dream of hers (becoming the owner and operator of a light-weight airplane), so that when the opportunity arose, she’d be ready to move on it. In other words, she was actively seeking ways to participate in her dream, while I was sort of waiting for mine to magically coalesce around me, form itself ready made, so that all I had to do was step into it.

That could be the reason why so many of us dismiss those fluff fantasies of another me, living another life. One that is exciting, fruitful, and fulfilling. Because we just don’t know how, or where, to begin and it all sounds like a whole lot of work, and its just a dream, after all, beyond the impossible, right? The Airplane Lady (I never did learn her name and never saw her again), left the store but also left a seed that day. I doubt she will ever know what her random planting did for me. I went home that night and began to write on a daily basis. I had no idea where it would take me, but I had to at least begin preparing for that dream I had kept in the fog at the back of my mind.

The first thing I discovered was that I had no idea of what I actually meant by, “I want to be a writer.” I needed a definition. My own definition. The desire to write was solidly there, I had been moving toward it for most of my life, yet didn’t have a clue what it was I wanted, or was capable, of writing. That was obviously the beginning of my journal writing. I had done some of that on a hit and miss basis for many years. That night I actually made a commitment that continues to this day. There is a saying about how it isn’t the particular destination, but the journey itself that is important. The recording of that journey became the most important factor for me. The definition became the destination, and still remains so.

Along the way, I have tried many different paths: poetry, publishing, editing, fiction, non-fiction etc. I have learned a great deal from each of them and recorded those lessons in my daily writing. My journey has not been completed, but I am certainly living inside my dream. A dream that is far more play than work. That may be another one of those reasons that we continue to dismiss those wish filled fantasies. They seem to be only play, not a reality of ongoing effort. Yet, the Airplane Lady had a much better grasp of reality than I did. She was working as an airplane mechanic, surrounded by the stuff of her dreams and loving every moment of that reality. And thanks to her and the little seed she planted, albeit all unknowingly, I am doing the same.

Which brings me to the big questions: What is your dream? What are you doing to prepare yourself to grasp hold of it, if it should ever appear on your horizon? What are the excuses you place in your own path to that dream? Do you think you are too old? Too set in your ways? Too inept to even begin? Can you define exactly what it is you want, wish, or desire? What small step could you take right now, at this moment, to move yourself closer to those wants and desires? Is there something wrong with gathering information? With allowing yourself to explore even small possibilities? What about a dream journal, one that has nothing to do with sleeping, and everything to do with waking up?

The Airplane Lady, whether she knows it or not, remains very high on my list of heroes. I am following in her footsteps, learning to fly my own airplane. This one I have built word by word, learning the mechanics of my own wish filled thinking, getting myself up and moving toward my own dreams. Those pie in the sky things I never thought were possible, yet now, are my reality. There may be only one difference between us. I know I am deliberately throwing those seeds from my airplane window.

How We Know What We Know

There are two primary ways in which we come to know whatever we know. These two avenues often seem like a two-way highway with occasional entrance and exit ramps where we can rest, maybe even loiter for an hour or two, but then get back on the highway, always careful when we choose to pass other vehicles in our path (at least one hopes this is done with care).

The first of these two paths is Objective Avenue. It is a step-by-step manner of building our knowing, taking exit 1, then 2, then 3, and finally arriving at our destination 4, where we know what we set out to know, or understand. It is the process of Logic, where one thing leads to the next and is not distracted by the greenery and mountainous landscape of Feelings. Logic could be seen as a teeming metropolis, overcrowded, even exciting, always filled with further movement, and even more logic. Pure Logic can be a very heady business, but it definitely snubs all those other avenues where the main thoroughfare is Subjective Lane.

Subjective Lane is the second path to knowing, and as its name suggests, it is far more relaxed, meanders through, often loiters at points of interest, sometimes even failing to arrive at any hoped for destination. That’s because it is built on a mountain called Association, where we travel, guided only by the map of our senses: imagery, taste, touch, hearing, etc. But don’t let Subjective Lane fool you into thinking you’re on vacation. It is teeming with even more life than Objective Avenue, hidden behind such things as Memory Hill, Dreams of Another Life, Smells That Wrinkle the Nose, and all such places. It might be a lazy back country lane, but it often abruptly turns into a graveled surface that kicks up dust, and obliterates the ability to see clearly.

The trick is to know that both of these paths lead directly, or otherwise, to the place we call Knowing, or Understanding. That’s the place the majority of us truly want to be. These two paths are forever entwined, braided in and through one another, usually open to further suggestions from both. Have you ever heard someone say, “Well, I didn’t so much think it, as see it, feel it, you know?” There are those who believe that thinking and feeling are the same, interchangeable. They aren’t. One is a step-by-step thought process, the other is linked directly to our senses and the associations that those senses create when stimulated.

Both paths are essential because they utilize and inform one another. Sometimes they do that by arguing with one another, and can even get into a knock down, dragged out brawl, that leaves the individual exhausted and sorely in need of a rest from both. Other times, one knows a thing is true, can see the Logic of it all because one has Subjectively lived through an experience that validates, underlines the reality of that truth. The opposite is also real, there are those experiences that suddenly make us aware of the Logic within the situation, the ‘rightness’ of the thing itself.

Now for the reason behind this little travelogue. Language is a function of the Logic aspect of our brain. However, most times we don’t think in words, we see the thought in images provided by our Senses, Association. To interpret, and more important, to express it, we must use Language, thus Logic. And around and around she goes, constantly. If that were not so, we wouldn’t be breathing, reading this, or trying to understand it. We’d be dead, no more than roadkill.

When we write on a regular basis, we place ourselves within easy reach, and actually on both of those Avenues mentioned above. And both of those Avenues readily respond guiding us through major traffic jams, and delivering us to our appointed destination. Not each and every time, but each and every time brings us closer to where we want to be and definitely facilitates our eventually getting there. It could be seen as the difference between hitting red stop lights at each intersection, and getting the green light all the way through downtown traffic. Which do you prefer?

Most of us prefer one of those Avenues to the other, at the risk of losing a more fully comprehended understanding. Those who stick with Subjective Lane, risk getting tied up in knots and possible insanity. Those who perfer the Interstate action of Objective Avenue, risk becoming completely detached from the color, vibrancy, and smell of real life, drifting toward some form of parallel to it, but not ever really understanding it, or living it. Again, which do you prefer?

Do you diss your feelings? Say they aren’t important? Shake your head at anything logical because it doesn’t take real ‘life’ into account? Writing allows you to explore both while using both, even after putting down the pen, or shutting off the computer. It actually is a simple bridge between the two and often leads to a clearer map with well appointed markings for direction. Yes, we all make wrong turns at one time or another, but if you’ve been writing, you also have the ability to go back, read, and find out just where you made that right, instead of left turn, and put yourself back on the track called Knowing. It is always your choice.