The Expansiveness of Art is Boundless

"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough." --Eugene Delacroix

You rise and set
and I’m sure I do not know
why you bother with me.

You hold East and West
distant ever--unfortunate lovers--
You set the waves to harbor
and each pebble on the beach
has an ancient name.
And here I am.
I will never be ancient
though I was formed with timeless magic
I will pass from life to death
with almost no notice at all
and I’m sure I do not understand
why you bother with me at all.
I have simple few moments to follow
out to the end
and in those moments, I rarely walk
tall and graceful and proud
I stumble awkwardly
a perpetual fawn trying to gain footing
I am ever skeptical of beauty and truth
always questioning the universe
as if all the answers would be revealed
to a child-brain
that wouldn’t comprehend it
You are gentle with me
and I count it harsh.
You are bold to impose your goodness on me
and I name it punishment.

The million tiny noises of the morning
are powered by your breath
you hear each chirping bug
each trilling bird
and this chorus is how I sense Your delight.
You are the rhythmic beat of
my heart
its time is kept at Your center--
You who command the moon’s cycles
with precision and balance,
with power that could crush
my life to dust with a word
but You are not a careless God.
You are bark of the tree
going up and up toward the sky
and down and down to the
turning life of the earth
and I‘m sure I’ll never know
Why you bother with me at all.

Back to 1956...or at least the 1990's

I went on an adventure that took me all around the city of Greensboro. It consequently introduced me to office suppliers in the city who have been in the business since before I was born. The goal of this excursion: find a replacement ribbon for my grandmother's 1956 Adler-Royal typewriter, which I recently inherited. This machine is a gorgeous piece of history. It speaks of a time when things moved a little slower: I have to be careful, precise, deliberate as I push the keys I require one at a time. But the enchantment that the piece holds for me goes quite beyond its historical significance. It is a precious memory: the wild waking of the creative in my child self cheered on by my Grammie. My grandmother encouraged my writing. She was eager for me to pull out her typewriter and set it on the desk nestled before a window that overlooked her still, green back yard. She would check on me every once in a while to see stacks of paper--littered by stately letters side by side with black blotted mistakes--growing like a miniature Tower of Babel on the floor. Even when she wasn't at my shoulder, I could feel her approving gaze urging me on. It didn't really matter what I wrote--I think we shared this realization. I don't remember her asking to read the finished work. I'm not even sure where those discarded bits of language went. It was more about the act of creating than it was the end result.The weight and resistance of the keys, their ancient ivory color, the punch of letter meeting paper as each finger flew up to add its beat to the rhythm of the writing song--indulging my fascination of these things could have been the entire goal. Today, I tap out a disconnected string of words, just to hear the familiar beat once more after more than 10 years. The machine is a willing partner in the inspired process: ready to be admired, it stands at attention like a seasoned soldier, eager to say something new in its old voice. Somehow it has evolved even while sitting dormant for so long--now I hear in its aged tapping the voice of my grandmother. It endures, this lovely, antiquated thing. And all the more loved because it is not for its necessity that it is cherished.

Unexpected Creativity

I don’t know why I absolutely had no motivation today for anything other than making a coffee cake.
I just felt in my bones that it would make my day so much better.

Then, as I mixed ingredients, I felt compelled to capture, to hold on to the texture and color of the soft lumps of sugar and butter forming rocky terrain across the bowl. While I was snapping some photographs, I realized that I was being creative. I was creating. Not just an edible something, but also a record of the experience, noticing the small things, like the complexity of a grain of sugar, the mystery of egg refusing to mix with milk without the force of a beating fork, the contrasting color of spilt cinnamon against the granite of the counter.
Perhaps this is what The Artist’s Way (by Julia Cameron) means about living creatively—that it is the natural order of things; we just have to remember what that feels like. I love it—it makes me feel less unproductive, to see writing a beautiful e-mail to a friend, photographing a baking experience, putting things in order, mixing a salad for lunch, as part of my creative life.

In the distance, it rises