creativity is a need

When the words don’t want to come, I soon discover that my other creative endeavors are stymied, too. 

When I feel a block in my writing, I think to myself, “I need to stitch,” or, “I need to paint.” I gather my materials, feeling assured that the project will kickstart my writing again, only to find myself staring at my supplies. I find I’m stuck in that area, too.

The muse does not discriminate. If I am feeling resistance to writing, it’s creative resistance across the board. And this is a problem. Creativity is a need, not a want, in my world.

Fortunately, I have learned a few things from such moments. I don’t know how others do it, but they work for me.

Discipline. The thing about writing, for me, is you just do it. You just show up and start. It might be a rough start, but you generally get into gear at some point.

Running/walking outside. Probably the biggest single source of activated inspiration in my life. Meditation in motion, in nature, rain or shine. Goes hand in hand with discipline.

Nature. Just getting out in it always nurtures:  breathing the air, feeling the sunshine or wind, noticing all the colors, scents, and sensations.

Permission #1. Importantly, I must give myself permission to be creative, affirming that it is a legitimate and desirable activity for which I am perfectly qualified. I wrote a little about this topic here as well.

Permission #2. Every now and then, I also realize I need to step away for a moment because something is percolating. In those times, it is best to let go and allow the space. Good time to go for a run, huh?

Pretty simple stuff, but it works for me. Maybe you have some tricks of your own?

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Stand for Freedom

ready

all these years later
she can’t help but notice
those moments when
she is still ready to run
ready to flee at a moment’s notice
ready to hide
to shrink into invisibility
ready to cower placate apologize submit
to be silent
ready to protect defend shield
guarded always
as the shadows continue to ricochet through her life

and yet somehow
the one who wrought those sad reflexes
must carry even more damage and suffering
worse
whether consciously or not
must live with the knowledge of what they did
and the legacy that lives from it 
on so many levels

why do so many seem to spend
years and years of their lives in healing
and others spend those years
simply refusing to see 
their own desperate need to heal?

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Note: In writing the above, I couldn’t help but recall this one I wrote some years ago here.

dreamless

I walk out to the middle of the field. Like a little kid, I plop down into the cool grass and sprawl out on my back. I just lie there, looking up at the sky. 

It’s one of those super-blue days, and there’s these lines of happy clouds coming across, ensemble, like a choreographed dance troupe. I lazily watch the travel of the clouds, blown along by an insistent wind.

The longer I lie there, the more I feel and hear the wind. It whips wisps of my hair across my face. I can hear the crinkle of the occasional tumbling leaf, remnant of winter, blowing past. 

I glance sideways through the grass and notice the dandelions. I feel kind of sneaky looking through the blades of grass, as if I’m somehow hidden.

But, no, there I am, grown adult, lolling in the grass, just watching the clouds, you know.

I close my eyes for awhile and roll my head back and forth, noticing the strange rainbow I see pass underneath my eyelids. Then I put my palms over my eyes, and I see the most psychedelic blue.

I open my eyes again, and just lie there, sinking down into the grass as my muscles slowly loosen. 

I am in the clouds, dreamless.

How many years has it been since I let myself do this simple, amazing thing?

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open like the sky

My heart is soft toward so many things. My heart opens like the sky for butterflies, or purring cats and smiling dogs, for the wind in the trees, for children in their tears or laughter or deep concentration, for strangers in their tentative hellos, for loved ones in their foibles and certainties and even in their angry moments. My heart responds with ease and joy and readiness to a beautiful, complicated world under the soul-sea of the heavens.

So I am surprised that this ready heart of mine remains aloof in a certain respect. How is it that my lone inner self, part of the ocean of being otherwise held so benevolently in my heart, is somehow almost invisible in there? 

I want my heart open to the me in me, giving love and solace and care there. Laughter and delight, too. It is, paradoxically, the me in me that is this wonderful heart so soft toward so many other things, is it not? Today, I allow my tender, embracing heart to reach everywhere.

note to self: I am loved