Creating and Consuming

Sometimes I wonder how the world keeps turning, how we keep existing, how life carries on when so much in our corner of the earth is off-the-walls crazy. I have found myself in a pretty constant state of anxiety the past month—so much so that a good portion of each day is spent actively seeking peace or at least searching for something to block out the excess emotion that has nowhere to go.

The usual habits have carried me along. The act of creating has traditionally been what I turn to, as the process is cathartic—tossing words around until they are just so or even making marks with a pen or a pastel or a paintbrush. But sometimes, I can’t pull myself out of the abyss long enough to get to a place where I can do any of that.

And when I can’t find my way to that place of creativity?

I read to escape to a different place.*

I know. You’re surprised.

This year, in lieu of New Year’s resolutions, I decided to begin a reading project: from one end of the bookcase to the other. As my shelves are organized by color, I began in red, which seems appropriate to both my state of mind and the state of the country.

So far I’ve read a book of Russian fairy tales as well as a book of world myths retold by Geraldine McCaughrean called The Golden Hoard. I’ve also got a book of Japanese folk tales at my bedside. I’ve used these mostly as palate cleansers in between longer or heavier books.

In the nonfiction zone, I’ve read Boy by Roald Dahl (an autobiography of his childhood), Letters to Michael: A Father Writes to His Son 1945-1947, by Charles Phillipson, and Les Girls by Constance Tomkinson (an autobiography of her time as a showgirl touring in Europe during WWII). I’ve also listened to a biography of Jane Austen by Elizabeth Jenkins, and much of Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49, part of the British Mass Observation archive during World War II.

On the fiction side of things, I’ve read Bardelys the Magnificent by Raphael Sabatini, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, which nearly did me in and required one of the aforementioned palate cleansers. I’ve listened to The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 1 by Beth Brower, and I just finished listening to The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner.

I’ve found that the things I consume are best when they consume me. So I’ve been careful about what I’ve allowed myself to be consumed by: mostly honorable characters with a sprinkling of humor and a good dose of the love of humankind—aside from the Agatha Christie, of course.

It’s been a long time since I’ve spent so much time reading and been so intentional about what I’ve read, and it’s made me so grateful for the writers and the artists of the world—those who pour their soul into their creations and then release them to the public, those who build worlds where I can find some respite, because there’s not much respite in real-life America right now.

As a creator, I often find myself thinking what good is any of the writing/art/creating that I do? To be honest, I truly don’t know. Not many people can know what effect anything they do has on anyone else. We simply shout into the abyss and hope the echo finds a home somewhere.

And yet, here I am in my need, surrounded by a richness of echoes sent out across time and space that have found a home here in my spirit. These echoes have helped me forget some things (the bad) and have helped me to remember others (the good). It makes me hopeful that I’ve been able to provide the same act of mercy for someone else.

So I send this out, with the hope that you, too, may be surrounded by a richness of echoes that reverberate in your heart this cold winter. And if not, I can highly recommend any of the above (except maybe the Agatha Christie).

With love,

Ginger

*I recognize that’s a privilege not everyone has. I also recognize there are thousands of people doing the heavy lifting right now, and I’m so, so grateful for the good they do.