Chaos unlocks creativity. Every morning, I’ve been obsessed with folding Victorian-era “secret letters.” I always get stuck at the same stage of the process, the second to last moment when the folds feel their way to a rightness and reveals itself. I’m learning that it only comes together if I don’t think too hard about it. Folding paper is a kind of mental yoga. The beginner’s mind is a fine place to dine on humility and awe.
Deep inside, I’m convinced that creativity is inextricably linked to survival, our ability to get through another day or disruption and dissolution, the promise of making something new from the ruins. I became a teacher at the age of 10. My first student was my little sister, who let me teach her lessons in the school I opened in our basement. I assigned homework, designed curricula, evaluated our mutual progress.
Now I think I may need to open another basement school for these underground days. I’m mourning the dissolution of every line and boundary that once defined my interests and life path—poetry, education, travel, language, culture, humanities—all crushed by the currents of this present, historical moment. I know I’m not alone in the casting out or returning within, I have faith in subjective curiosity.
Zanzibar was a relationship with the wind more than anything or anyone else. I fell in love—twice—but love was a condition of the wind. On walks with friends along the shore, my whole body pressed against the sky to take another step, and if I looked down, all I could see were my hennaed feet rooted firmly in the sand, hoping to remain upright against the blue waves. There on the beaches of Bwejuu I had many talks about the illusion of belonging anywhere for too long.
Life exposes us to the “mutable fury of things,” a line I take from “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante. In the book, she’s recollecting the first time she walks with her father to the sea on the shores of Napoli, how the wind slapped her clothes against her body, how the mesh of lights and sounds made it hard to capture the moment. I like anyone who helps me learn how to situate in a place and tell about its particularities.
Tell me again how any of us find ourselves anywhere and claim it was destined? Born one place, flung another—high atlas, deep cave, scraggly cliff, disco dance floor, classroom full of kids, southern exposure, mountain towns, haunted hallways—I can’t name them all. But all writing is a kind of time travel and I’m learning to take you with me—writer as tour guide—memory as map.
The thing I’ve noticed so far about aging, though, is that elders care less about what they remember than about what they feel and what they make. All the greats I’ve observed kept making art, singing their hearts out, banging on the piano, scribbling their notes, until their number was called and they made their cosmic transitions. What if it’s about remembering less and making more up as we go along?
Sometimes I don’t like where my mind takes me in the maze, but I remain loyal to the assignment I’ve given myself this month, to write what comes to me in conversation with the texts I read, and share them with as little interference from the critic within. The morning has disappeared and I’m still here listening to birds tweeting in the frozen snow.
Transit Slips, #6
Deep inside, I’m convinced that creativity is inextricably linked to survival, our ability to get through another day or disruption and dissolution, the promise of making something new from the ruins. I became a teacher at the age of 10. My first student was my little sister, who let me teach her lessons in the school I opened in our basement. I assigned homework, designed curricula, evaluated our mutual progress.
Now I think I may need to open another basement school for these underground days. I’m mourning the dissolution of every line and boundary that once defined my interests and life path—poetry, education, travel, language, culture, humanities—all crushed by the currents of this present, historical moment. I know I’m not alone in the casting out or returning within, I have faith in subjective curiosity.
Zanzibar was a relationship with the wind more than anything or anyone else. I fell in love—twice—but love was a condition of the wind. On walks with friends along the shore, my whole body pressed against the sky to take another step, and if I looked down, all I could see were my hennaed feet rooted firmly in the sand, hoping to remain upright against the blue waves. There on the beaches of Bwejuu I had many talks about the illusion of belonging anywhere for too long.
Life exposes us to the “mutable fury of things,” a line I take from “My Brilliant Friend,” by Elena Ferrante. In the book, she’s recollecting the first time she walks with her father to the sea on the shores of Napoli, how the wind slapped her clothes against her body, how the mesh of lights and sounds made it hard to capture the moment. I like anyone who helps me learn how to situate in a place and tell about its particularities.
Tell me again how any of us find ourselves anywhere and claim it was destined? Born one place, flung another—high atlas, deep cave, scraggly cliff, disco dance floor, classroom full of kids, southern exposure, mountain towns, haunted hallways—I can’t name them all. But all writing is a kind of time travel and I’m learning to take you with me—writer as tour guide—memory as map.
The thing I’ve noticed so far about aging, though, is that elders care less about what they remember than about what they feel and what they make. All the greats I’ve observed kept making art, singing their hearts out, banging on the piano, scribbling their notes, until their number was called and they made their cosmic transitions. What if it’s about remembering less and making more up as we go along?
Sometimes I don’t like where my mind takes me in the maze, but I remain loyal to the assignment I’ve given myself this month, to write what comes to me in conversation with the texts I read, and share them with as little interference from the critic within. The morning has disappeared and I’m still here listening to birds tweeting in the frozen snow.
Transit Slips, #6
