I Am Not Creative

Once in a while a person messages me to say something like: I would really like to come to your workshop at such and such place and time, but I have no money. Would you consider bartering with me?

Ten years ago such a woman approached me. She was an astrologer and offered me a natal chart reading in exchange for a workshop. I said yes, as I was curious. It was my first time. And I wanted to help.

Yolanda was her name, and she spoke with a Spanish accent. In our phone conversation, she opened by asking me a question: “You are an Aquarius. What do you know about the sign as it relates to you?”

To that I answered: I know that I am ‘creative’. She said: “No, you are not creative”. This seemingly simple statement shook me as since childhood the one thing I was certain about was that I was.

It was full on my identity as long as I remember myself. Baffled, I asked in my own English: “I am not? As if a stranger can know me better than I do. To that she answered in a warmhearted, almost regretful tone:

“No, it’s not that you are not creative, but more than that you are ‘innovative’, You possess originality, visionary thinking, and invention. I then calmed, and thought to myself: “Okay, this I can digest”.

And it’s all so true, I am more this than that. I always was. As a young child, more than drawing, scribbling, doodling, painting, I would come up with ideas, ways to get myself out of isolation.

Since extreme shyness, anxiety, and melancholy ruled my existence. But when I went outside to play I would invent processes, rituals, and activities, to initiate connection the only way I knew how.

And that brings me to the story of Shasha. A ‘game’ I invented, for the children of my neighborhood to play with me, to encourage the inclusion of me. I assigned a prompt, task, a game. An idea.

In Shasha, I’d ask the neighbors to go out to the field behind our apartment building and collect little natural elements, leaves, grass, weeds, in the palms of their hands, and when done, return to me.

Then we’d gather in a close circle, hands offered to the sky, bodies slightly touching one another, anticipating with excitement, I would count till three, and then, while throwing the content of our hands to the air..

We would impassionedly yell: Shashaaaaaaaaa!!!! And Carl Jung asked: "What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits”.

And so, yes, always, less creative, more innovative. I still invent things for people to do, to uplift, to create, to feel close to humans, to recall simple and primal times when loving was simple.

To just play.

Yolanda knew all this before I met her in class that spring, 10 years ago.

Not much has changed in this regard. Still inventing silly things to get us to ‘touch’ each other.