[L, diary, ephēmeris] 1) BLOG

 “What you produce is not necessarily always sacred…what IS sacred is the time you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.”

Elizabeth Gilbert, BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

Last February of this year, I began writing a post that languished unfinished until recent prods from numerous sources, old & new books, pod casts and personal doubts about effectiveness, have finally prompted a return to discussing the art of valuing creativity in our everyday lives.  I'd written:

       "Yesterday I scheduled an afternoon of editing a manuscript with a local woman who, every Saturday for the past fourteen years, has cleaned and done laundry for me.  This morning, before I'd read Clint's post, The Origin Story,  from his example of George Morton's conviction,"...beauty can emanate from darkness as well as light." I'd filled numerous journal pages echoing his thoughts as they concerned the life-story Ludy  has been composing very Saturday afternoon. I concluded: But it can shine from the in-between, as well. Perhaps, even more poignantly?

Comparisons between Morton's life and Ludy's, the access to opportunities he had despite an equally poor start in life., pained me.  Ludy's output was that of an aging wife and mother, sixty-plus years of life in a rural village of native bamboo and Nipa-roofed homes, where her natural talent for storytelling was hindered but not diminished by a severe lack of exposure to any literature or even the paper/paper/time to write them. Ludy's output and level of skill was nil until she began participating in the One Candle Schoolhouse activities, and pitifully little, since.  What she has written, and had published, would be barely glanced or tolerated by most.  No possibility of competing for recognition, and yet....she deserves it.

Why? Because life for all of us will be enriched when we can re-frame our references for recognizing art we unconsciously express within daily lives. Below are a few supporting quotes that encourage me when I begin to question the worth of my own efforts:

BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

                     by Elizabeth Gilbert

(pg.108) …after a certain age, no matter how you’ve been spending your time, you have very likely earned a doctorate in living…we need you to reveal to us what you know, what you have learned, what you have seen and felt…you already possess absolutely everything you need to possess in order to live a more creative life—except the confidence…but we need you…need your work in order to enrich and inform our own lives…you are already creatively legitimate by nature of your mere existence here among us.”

(pg.202) “…our ancestors always operated with a sense of being in a reciprocal emotional relationship with their physical surroundings.  Whether they felt that they were being rewarded by Mother Nature or punished by her, at least they were engaged in a constant CONVERSATION with her.”

DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD,

                      by Ursula K. LeGuin

(pg.186) … discussing a book she wrote about a non-existent tribe, the Kesh:

"Most Kesh poetry was occasional--the highest form, according to Goethe--and much of it was made by what we call amateurs, people doing poetry as a common skill, the way people do sewing or cooking, as an ordinary and essential part of being alive. The quality of such poetry sewing, and cooking of course varies enormously. We have been taught that only poetry of extremely high quality is poetry at all; that poetry is a big deal, and you have to be a pro to write it or in fact, to read it.  This is what keeps a few poets and many, many English departments alive.  That's fine, but I was after something else:  the poem not as fancy pastry but as bread; the poem not as masterpiece but as life-work."

BIG MAGIC, Creative Living Beyond Fear

                     by Elizabeth Gilbert

(pg.219)  “There’s a hole in our world from all the art people did not make—there’s a hole in US from the loss of their work—and I cannot imagine that was ever anyone’s divine plan.”

 

(pg.259) “You were born to create, regardless of the outcome.  You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don’t understand the outcome.”

(pg.263) “…hold your head high. You made it; you get to put it out there.  Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that.”

THE PEOPLE I LOVE THE BEST (last paragraph)

                    Poem by Marge Piercy