creativity boot camp word of the day: flying. i fly…
When I saw today’s word for the Creativity Boot Camp project – fly - I blinked a couple of times because I couldn’t believe it. I rubbed my eyes, I shook my head a little bit, I moved closer to the computer screen. Flying. It really says flying.
All night long I dreamed I was flying. In the gauzy period when I was just closing my eyes – not quite awake and not quite asleep – I dreamed I was floating, floating, dreamy floating, lying in the soft air as if I were in a Chagall painting.
I floated a lot in my sleep. And there were times I was flying, pushing off from the ground with my right foot, soaring, wheeling, swooping. Flying. As flying usually does, it felt like complete freedom.
Who knows why we dream what we do, but I suspect I dreamed of flying all night because of an enormous change that’s about to happen. I’ve alluded to it a lot, the incredible stress and frequent misery of my job. I love the work itself, I love my authors, I love the books I acquire, I love the publisher I acquire them for, I just don’t love the terrible pressures. Monday I am giving my notice, my last day will be the end of this month.
The sky is vast when the chains fall away – everything is possible. What will I do? I hope to do some writing, helping authors improve their manuscripts (if you know anyone who needs the help of a writer, think of me!). I will do some teaching. I have a lot of possibilities: my graduate minor is statistics and I love to analyze data; I love to write; I have done a lot of qualitative research, focus groups and the like; I am a social psychologist which means among other things that I know how to research literatures and synthesize them, and I know how to think about why people do what they do.
the sky is upside down in a reflection here - the world does that sometimes, too
Flying is thrilling, flying is scary, there is danger in flying, crashing lives in the shadows, but what are we here for? To stand on the ground our whole lives and just look at the sky?
too tired to grow……..
When I saw today’s word this morning, my heart sank. I could tell it’s an easy word, a potent word, a word that could go in a lot of directions. At least, I could tell that those things were true for other people, today.
I dressed, left for work, stood numbly in the subway, unable to understand what I was reading – reading and re-reading and re-reading, trying to make my exhausted brain get it this time. I trudged from Penn Station to my office, my feet heavy, my bags heavy, my head heavy.
I worked, hard hard work all day, never even turning around once to see that it was a sunny day out my window. Never getting up to go to the bathroom. Work work work. Intellectual and creative work today, editing a manuscript, wanting to give my dear author my best work for his own best work. Other manuscripts waiting, other authors writing and calling, other problems all around, no time to stop for anything work work work. My forehead aches from the frowning of hard thinking, and from the pressures of things I did not get to today.
I let this word lie in the back of my mind, hoping something would emerge, some way of dealing with this word, but nothing came. I thought today would just be a pass – I’m not whipping myself, this is an enjoyable and challenging project, if I just can’t do it today I just can’t do it.
And then I realized that this day taught me something about growth. Nothing can grow without space to grow in. A seed from an enormous tree might sprout and grow in a very small pot, but it will never be big, it will always be stunted; nothing wrong with the seed, everything wrong with the pot. Growth needs sleep, rest, food, space.
no growing today
If I want to commit myself to nurturing my own creativity, to growing, something has to change. And change is a-coming.
a multilayered story of experience, recorded for creativity boot camp
This word was challenging, as Maegan said it would be. I let it percolate in the back of my mind all day at work. I thought of one direction I’d go, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. Then, sitting here with my fingers poised over my keyboard, it hit me.
In 1988, my baby, my son, was failing to thrive. We’d moved from Texas to Connecticut. I didn’t know anyone. I was still hemorrhaging from his birth, the previous May. I had a 5-year old daughter, a 2-year old daughter, and an infant. I didn’t know it, but he was simply allergic to the corn syrup in his formula – but his pediatrician told me a devastating story of a failed life for my most precious little boy.
So, in the deep dark middle of the nights, I sat in my chair and pieced a quilt. Each little diamond, each stitch, soaked in my tears, dyed with my heartsick worry. I stitched and stitched, night after night.
Months passed, I figured out the corn syrup connection and changed his formula. We moved to Virginia, to Fredericksburg. He caught up, he ran and laughed. He lay under my quilting hoop and laughed when the quilting needle poked through the quilt. He laughed, my son laughed, and so did I.
my tear- and laughter-soaked quilt
It’s the first quilt I ever made, and I have layers of thoughts and feelings when I look at it – pride, and memories of the dark and the terror, joyful memories of his laughter. It’s impossible to feel just one thing when I look at it. The making of it is layered and complex. And now it lives in my oldest daughter’s home, in the first home she bought with her husband.
Meagan provided this perfect poem – so perfect I include it here, so it’s forever linked with my story.
The Journey, by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice—
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
Each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice
Which you slowly recognized as you own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do—
Determined to save
The only life that you could save.
creativity boot camp, day 2
What a challenge, today’s word picnic, since it’s a work day, I live in the manmade canyons of Manhattan, and I won’t get home until nearly 9pm.
Or so you would think.
Manhattan is lush, full of flowers and trees and bushes and color. Benches and paths, winding brick roads. It may not be what you call to mind, but it is so intertwined in the city that I cannot think of it otherwise. Central Park, you probably thought of that one already, huge and filling the heart of this city. But there’s also Riverside Park, a place I document in this blog again and again in every season, because it’s effectively my back yard. I never get tired of walking in Riverside Park. I walk past joggers, and dog walkers, and parents following toddlers, and parents following new bike riders, and lovers, and friends, and young people, and older people, and people sitting on benches in the sun, or reading the newspaper, or eating.
Those are some of the big parks, but certainly not the only ones. There are smaller parks everywhere. Actual parks, and nearly-hidden lots that have been turned into a small community garden, or park, we all crave that kind of space. I work on Madison Avenue, in the heart of midtown. There are churches in the neighborhood, and bodegas, and diners, but it’s primarily business business business.
Ten blocks south of my office is Madison Square Park, which has been a shared urban space since 1686. In 1870, it was landscaped when the city formed its first Department of Public Parks. Every summer there is a huge BBQ cook-off in the park; in a corner of the park there’s a locally famous joint called Shake Shack, which is so popular they have a Shake Shack cam so you can check how long the line is before heading over. I had no plans to eat a greasy hamburger and fries, or to savor the heavy ice cream concoction they call a concrete. Instead, my missions were two: to get out of the office and into this beautiful day, and to illustrate the urban picnic.
breakfast picnic, on Broadway in front of Macy's
what do we do during our urban picnics? We lounge and soak up sun. We eat salads.
we eat salads and sushi in the company of strangers
sometimes we dress in a twee and precious way, read a bit of Proust while not wearing socks, and munch delicately on a classy subway sandwich, while being exquisitely aware of our own cool sartorial splendor
On the way back to the office from my picnic observing, I spotted a few things I wanted to share with you:
sunlight reflecting off one building onto another
a great horned restaurant right next to the Museum of Sex. Horns? Horned? And what *are* those things above the horns?
it's an upright town - you've gotta look straight up to see the sky now and then
happy hour at the Macy's picnic tables on Broadway
[edit: That building with horns? Turns out it's the Gershwin Hotel. In addition to regular suites and rooms, they have dorm rooms with bunk beds! You can stay there for $49 a night, in the 6-bed room room, or $39 a night in the 10-bed room. Or you could get the suite for $275/night. It's an interesting space, full of art. ]
This poem about a picnic doesn’t start off sounding like the Manhattan version, but by the end I can totally see it, can you?
Picnic on the Shore (Lois Jenkins)
Shore grass growing
among the big rocks
enduring year after year.
This is the way to live.
A simple life,
the proper arrangement
of a few elements.
But here you are
standing on slippery stone,
trying to balance
a full plate and a cup.
What with the wrappers,
the flies and the wind,
already things have gotten out of hand.
pondering the meaning of ivory
Today is the first day of creativity boot camp, and the assignment is ivory. One of my primary — and most difficult — tasks will be to be kind to myself and just follow what happens without being mean and critical. That’s hard for most people, I think, and if you have a cruel and hateful inner voice, as I do, it’s just shy of impossible. But I am going to try – to step out and be daring, and just follow myself without offering explanation and apology.
high school graduation, 1977
Ivory is pale skin, skin that is lit from the inside, skin that is soft and beautiful. I have ivory skin; I always have.
me and my camera
Ivory skin is one ideal, peaches and cream, pale and beautiful. There are other ideals, too – tan and bronze and cafe au lait and olive and honey. But those beautiful colors do not make ivory their opposite, ugly – ivory is another beautiful way of being in this world.
Ivory is cream.
Ivory is precious.
I am ivory.
My hands are ivory. My hands are MY hands, they resemble the hands of my father, and my grandmother, but these are my hands.
my hands
Throughout my life, other people have commented on my skin – my lovely complexion – and I insisted on belittling it. I can’t tan, I’m pale and ugly, your skin is honey but mine is putty. But I was wrong, every time. I am beautiful ivory.
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Popular posts: