To Be Someone Who Makes Things

Today, like many days, I woke up with a slight sense of dread and fear. My husband and I have adopted a no news allowed until evening policy. . . if at all. Discipline gives me a little shove to my books, journals and the laptop. Here I find solace, sentimental though it sometimes may be. It’s not that I want to hide from the events of these times, it’s that I want to find our common good once again — the place that knows the difference between right and wrong and isn’t afraid to stand for what is right. The place where awe resides.

in this morning of caffeine and chaos

the years press in.

longing follows me from room to room

clutter behind expectation.

life gestates in dusty corners

of something unkept.

unknowing birthed in solitude

becomes the dreaming of one last dream,

reminding me

we are all here to create.

Knowing myself as a creative being, owning who I am as poet and philosopher still feels shaky to claim. But I claim it every day, anyway. Life revealed from journal and pen; the light of soul’s expression birthed from a deep quiet. Rooted in the darkness, the script across the page, shapes meaning from the mundane.

Once I met and interviewed the poet, Richard Blanco. He described poetry as revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary. He’d been watching his mother chop onions in the kitchen one day, an act he’d seen her repeat hundreds of times. But on that particular day, he saw all of life unfold in that one small action.

I chopped onions for last night’s dinner, sautéed them in a pan with peppers and chicken breasts. An act of gathering and preparing, of presenting and feeding, but there was no epiphany. The muse rarely speaks if I go looking for her. Wisdom doesn’t unfold upon command. Only this morning, after the fact, did I have a realization that millions of us chop onions in making dinner, in millions of kitchens. My sense of alone, is never really an “alone.”

Creativity writes the day into being. Owls announce from roof tops. Coyotes howl from someplace far away in the canyon. My pen bleeds struggle while the honey of life sticks sweetly to my fingers and the page.

Write, over-write, and re-write, is what I do. And all day there is an invitation to create – meals, gardens, a home. Make poetry from the tattered threads of memories and smoky ideas.

To create is to resist the horrors too easily found in the current passage of greed and corruption, the place in which we all live in this country. As creative beings, we keep alive the profundity of chopping onions for the pan. I think most of us want to do more than just survive.

A journal and pen defines so much for me; helps me to find meaning; reflects insight and emotion; opens my heart a little more each day. To write a poem or sing along with the music is a radical act. We can and will create more than they can possibly destroy.

Praise the moments of grace, leaving a trail from pen to page. This helps me to remember who I am and what my creative work is about.

Where does our creativity come from? Is it from head and heart? An expression of soul’s longing? Can it be a radical act, defiance in the face of cruelty? What does a creative practice feed and nurture inside of us? Let’s have a conversation.