8.11.2006

Create

In Blogger, when you sit down to enter a new post, the tab is named "create".

That's all I want to do. Create and create. I don't know where this volcanic explosion of creative energy has come from, exactly; it's entirely inconvenient that it's appearing side-by-side with the attempt to learn how to supervise in a 911 center. I have artistic ideas simmering like homemade soup: cards and journals and gifts, bookmarks, CD covers...even some more ambitious ideas, that step more boldly from the safe haven of "craft" into real-and-true "art".

I will now reveal a secret. A few years ago a bin of my old school pictures and tests with stars on the top margin returned to me. In the pile there was one of those fill-it-in-as-you-go books with a chapter for each grade, sometimes accompanied by a school picture featuring really outrageous pre-braces teeth. In the second grade chapter, it asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. The answer:

An artist.

Surprising. Somewhere along the line I decided that it was my True Calling to be a writer, but there was a hitch. I enjoy writing, and have a knack for it, but I really hate being holed up for hours with nothing but a keyboard. I have absolutely no follow-through for writing. So, my creativity withering on the vine, I took up other pursuits such as delivering pizza, teaching disabled people how to live happy, successful lives and answering calls to 911. I have held myself together with cross-stitch and crochet and the periodic addition of new skills, like making pine needle baskets and stenciling coasters.

I thought the artist within was satisfied. After all, they were some damned nice coasters.

Then I tripped over this collage thing and I just don't know if I will ever be right again. It's keeping me together right now, a sturdy little cord that from which I am dangling over the abyss. Rummaging through bins of ephemera to find that just-right thing to finish off a corner, I am in the midst of Flow, with the capital F. Time dissolves and I am completely absorbed. When I look up again, I feel restored.

I love being creative. Nothing else makes me feel so alive, so worth it. When I'm creating I'm interacting in the world in a way no one else can, and that feels more important to me than anything else.

Even coasters.

1 comment:

Izabella Blue said...

wow! I am awed by your writing! I believe we have a ton in common~

thanks for visiting my website & leaving your precious note~

going back to read some more of your blog!

xo ~Izabella