Finding
Inspiration
“What
are YOU bringing to life today?”
Elizabeth
Gilbert (Facebook Page)
Such a
good question. In these pandemic days—now nine months into self-containment—we mostly
feel like dried up husks of human beings with not much of anything to bring to
life. I can’t speak for you, of course, but I hit doldrums when nothing appeals
to me and nothing inspires me. My usual response is to dilly-dally around, pick
things up and put them down, and feel as though my head is full of sawdust. I
sweep a floor and see how much dust is in the corners and along the baseboards,
and then just walk away without doing anything to clean them up. It feels as
though whatever enlivens me has moved to Texas, or maybe to the Samoan islands.
Anyway, it’s far out of reach. I wonder whether you have periods like this too.
These
are uncomfortable times for me, but I’ve learned to live with them. It’s rather
like being becalmed at sea—there’s plenty of time and sunshine around me, but I’m
not going anywhere. It isn’t stagnation so much as brain-freeze. So, I wait.
And while I wait, I do the other (more odious) chores that need to be done.
Clean up the paper stacks, run the vacuum cleaner, pay bills, sort through things and organize, balance my
checkbook (gag), and make soup—lamb and sweet potato this time. And while I’m
keeping my hands busy, I notice what is bubbling away at the surface of
awareness.
For instance, I’m
thinking about my friends’ farm up the road in Springville. There is a flower and
vegetable garden there that is waning toward winter. Lots of red-okra pods and zinnia
and gaillardia flowers. Wonder whether they would produce natural dyes? I
wouldn’t think about natural dyes except for the fact that my friend Anna
brought a small cotton hanky to show me, made by her Mississippi artist-friend, Winki
Allen. It is light blue, tie-dyed, with simple needle work along the edges. Allen
uses only natural dyes she makes herself from her own garden. And just like
that, I’m off on a new project.
That is how inspiration
works—at least for me. It comes from anywhere. Several separate, unrelated
sources somehow coalesce into one possible outcome. So, waiting through what
seems like gridlock of the mind, turns out to be more like fallow ground. It’s
rich and ready for whatever seeds of creativity you throw at it. So, I’ll ask
you Elizabeth Gilbert’s good question, “What are you bringing to life today?”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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