Creative Sanctuary

creativity

Fallow

By Allison

fallow fieldFallow times are productive times.  I’ve spent the last few months lazing around intellectually.  Given that I was coming down from a handful of writing deadlines and processing a few emotional hardships, it was appropriate to settle into a protective and hollow mental space.  I admit that I haven’t been reading a lot.  I haven’t even been thinking very much.  I’ve been curled up, so to speak, allowing my mind to rest so that my creative spirit will reset and regenerate.

Stepping away from an active mindset is easier said than done.  Even when I seek a change of pace, it takes me days to settle into a state in which my mind doesn’t churn.  Fallowness gives way to sensations of boredom, and boredom makes me feel guilty.  When I notice feelings of shame coming on, I swat them away.  I remind myself that boredom declutters my mind and makes space for intellectual freshness.  It creates an environment in which streams of thought might flow and original ideas might form.  Our bodies are similar to fields that benefit from periods of inactivity.  We emerge rejuvenated and bring our new energy to our work and our relationships.  Not only are we better thanks to fallow periods, but people around us also benefit from the inactive time we’ve given to ourselves.

After a few months that have felt empty and blank, I sense a shift in myself.  Ideas are percolating.  Each day I sit down to write, and energy rushes into my palms and then my fingers.  I am mostly writing fluff, but I’m writing.  Though my curiosity and focus are returning, I’m not charging forward just yet.  This selfish, fallow period has been restorative.  I’ve been kind to myself.  I’ve allowed my mind to wander.  The starkness has brought new perspectives and opened my heart. Surprising, unexpected creative paths have emerged, and I tentatively begin to pursue them.

 

Love Musings

By Allison

rose tea heart

Photo courtesy of Shelley Richardson

Those who love use their imagination to discover solutions where others see only problems.  Those who love help others according to their needs and with creativity, not according to preconceived ideas or common conceptions.
–Pope Francis

Valentine’s Day can be fraught.  Although I see the holiday as a sweet reminder to celebrate all kinds of love, I understand the loneliness that can accompany this overwhelming greeting card day.  It is difficult to be alone on Valentine’s Day when you feel like everyone you know is sharing a cozy dinner with their sweetheart.  I have been in that sad emotional space, but several years ago, I released those feelings of inadequate solitude because they were holding me back.

Love is so much more than chocolate, flowers, and candle-lit meals!  We have a responsibility to inhabit love—to be love—each day.  Love is a powerfully creative act:  “Those who love help others according to their needs and with creativity.”  It is a dynamic, ever-evolving energy that moves us through our days.  Love involves interplay, cooperation, and patience.  It is neither formulaic nor superficial.  It is practical, messy, and beautiful.  As I have written before, love is our duty and our pleasure.

Love is too abundant, too expansive to be contained in one grey February day.  Maybe it is a bit silly to dedicate one day of the year to a concept that is so vast yet so vague, but I am content to embrace Valentine’s Day as a moment to celebrate love and to reevaluate my thoughts on love.  This year, I recommit to allowing the energy of love, whatever unexpected or unconventional form it may take.

I Lost the Art of Letter Writing

By Allison

stationery and penWhen I was eight, my grandmother gifted me my first diary.  She must have ordered it from the Lillian Vernon Catalog.  It was bright pink with tiny yellow and purple hearts.  It had a lock and key.  I was tickled.

I began writing in my diary on January 1, 1987.  Since I hated boys and didn’t have any secrets to record, I wrote about my days.  Math class-basketball practice-sleepover.  Reading class-basketball practice-dinner with the neighbors.  Math class-basketball practice-Connect Four with Beej and Trish.  After a month, I realized that my third grade life lacked variety.  My diary had become repetitive, so I set it aside.

In middle school the expected intrigues sprouted, so I began to journal.  At about the same time, I became a prolific letter writer.  For almost two decades, I penned three and four page letters on fine paper with fancy pens provided by my father.  During those formative years, I filled pages and sent them to friends around the world.  I loved the tactile experience of putting words to the page, of embroidering my stories on paper.

Several years ago, I abruptly stopped writing letters.  I still have an abundance of beautiful stationery, and I sign important documents with Dad’s Waterman pens. Why did I abandon a beloved and soothing activity?  I often hear people say that they just don’t have time to write letters, and although time is a consideration, I don’t really buy that explanation.  We choose how to spend our precious time—with family, in front of Netflix, at the gym, or hard at work.  Although I am nostalgic for the ambitious letter-writing me, I choose to use my leisure time differently.  I want to take walks with my friends, and I want to share meals with them.  For now, face-to-face exchanges with loved ones take precedent over letters.

Yet the blank page still calls to me.  Its emptiness is an inspiring, potential space of creation.  When I sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a white computer screen, ideas shoot through me and chains of words form in my mind’s eye.  Some of them make their way to this blog—a crisscrossed echo of the journaling and letter-writing I left behind.  Happily, I am still “embroidering”.

 

Inspriations

My lovely friend Dana is a talented letter writer who blogs about all things mail on Save Snail Mail.

Thomas Mallon’s book Yours Ever investigates letter writing in the western world.

I once visited the delightful Musée des Lettes et Manuscrits where I saw several of Matisse and Picasso’s letters.  Sadly, the museum closed in 2010.

Light and Sky

By Allison

sky astor court nyc“Space is the breath of art.”
–Frank Lloyd Wright

Sometimes big cities suffocate me.  It seems that every inch of space is occupied by buildings, kiosks, and concrete.  I often find myself needing more green and more sky.

My recent trip to New York was bitterly cold, and the wind was brutal.  Venturing out was a process and a challenge, but my walks were freeing—the icy wind invigorating, the snowflakes dreamy.  Ice and snow dotted grey-green Central Park.  I easily weaved my way through the crowds on 5th avenue, stumbled into a toasty bookstore when my toes were too cold, and late one afternoon, found a French bistro serving soupe au pistou.

The constant chill of those days froze my senseless, minor worries, and the wind then blew them away.  Amongst and between the traffic and skyscrapers, I reclaimed my inner spaciousness.  New York gave breath to an elegant artfulness that refreshed and reset my own desire to create.  I bring home color, texture, light, and sky.

 

Inspirations

Afternoon Tea in Astor Court

Pablo Picasso’s Bird on a Tree at the Guggenheim

Odilon Redon’s Pandora at the Met

Mozart and Tchaikovsky at Lincoln Center

Embroidery

By Allison

Flea markets are therapeutic.  My eyes do the initial sifting as I make my way down the aisles and through the booths.  When I am drawn to an object—a hand-painted tray, a copper planter, a Limoges teacup—I approach for a closer look.  Where was it made?  What is its story?  Can I make space for this object in my little house?

The visual and tactile experience of an overflowing flea market allows me to move beyond my internal, distracting chatter.  Yesterday, in the company of a friend, this dainty needlepoint purse found me.  The handwork is intricate—much care and concentration went into this old-fashioned piece.  I wonder who made it and who carried it…

Embroidery has long been a form of feminine expression.  My self-taught needlework is precise but sporadic.  Usually, I choose to embroider through language.  Both written and spoken, words form my stitches.  Clean, fumbling, or elegant they lend texture to my creative work.  Pauses are perhaps more important than words.  Spaces of silence, they allow my chains of words to function as thoughts.  At the flea market, I sometimes find myself existing in the spaces between the stitches of everyday life.  The precious pause leads me to small treasures, sharpens my curiosity about their pasts, and inspires me to imagine new places and purposes for them.