Slower. Fewer. Deeper.

Mary Ellen

It’s a humid, sunny Sunday afternoon here in the Midwest, the steady clock of August ticking away in the background. I’m remembering in a palpable way the end of summer as a kid before heading back to school, hanging onto and savoring the sights, scents, and feel of what I now recognize as a completely immersive, full-bodied reverie of life. I want so much for my grandchildren to know this in their own little bodies and I want to trust that this multi-sensory experience of summer will triumph over any attempts, digital or otherwise, to dwarf that headlong, full-throttle dive into nature, called by nature herself, that children and grandchildren (and, really, all of us) are hard-wired to do.

Morrisonville was a poor place to prepare for a struggle with the twentieth century, but a delightful place to spend a childhood. It was summer days drenched with sunlight, fields yellow with buttercups, and barn lofts sweet with hay. Clusters of purple grapes dangled from backyard arbors, lavender wisteria blossoms perfumed the air from the great vine enclosing the end of my grandmother’s porch, and wild roses covered the fences. On a broiling afternoon when the men were away at work and all the women napped, I moved through majestic depths of silences, silences so immense I could hear the corn growing. Under these silences there was an orchestra of natural music playing notes no city child would ever hear. A certain cackle from the henhouse meant we had gained an egg. The creak of a porch swing told of a momentary breeze blowing across my grandmother’s yard. Moving past Liz Virts’ barn as quietly as an Indian, I could hear the swish of a horse’s tail and knew the horseflies were out in strength. As I tiptoed along a mossy bank to surprise a frog, a faint splash told me the quarry had spotted me and slipped into the stream. Wandering among the sleeping houses, I learned that tin roofs crackle under the power of the sun, and when I tired and came back to my grandmother’s house, I padded into her dark cool living room, lay flat on the floor, and listened to the hypnotic beat of her pendulum clock on the wall tickiing the meaningless hours away.

~ Growing Up, by Russell Baker

With our young now up against unworthy, addictive opponents for their attention and engagement — quantity over quality, shiny, electrifying, superficial objects on screens that keep them hungry and unsatisfied, yet compelled by misplaced hope to keep coming back for more — one antidote, tried and true, ancient, even, and deeply, dependably gratifying, is any trek into the great outdoors, including and perhaps especially right out the back door.

It wasn’t all that long ago that my 9 y.o. grandson and I were out hunting frogs in the yard, both of us gripped by the ribbit sound coming from the garden along the driveway. With the sun setting and our hour-long attempt leaving us regrettably empty-handed, I asked him what he thought about heading in for a bath.

“I think it’d be a complete waste of time.”

Kids are preternaturally, irrepressably drawn into nature, their very biochemistry assuring them that they are at home here. This isn’t a misread. Their young bodies are telling them something primordially true. The neurochemistry of screen time is an altogether different experience, one that pales in comparison to that deeply elemental embrace of Mother Earth, an invitation which says, to kids and to all of us, “You belong here.”

Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it.

~ Mary Oliver, in Why I Wake Early

Like many of the last generation to remember childhood without devices, I see what’s about to be lost here, a reverie so worthy of preserving, not only for our kids’ and grandkids’ sake but for the sake of the future of our species.

To be in a state of reverie is to inhabit multiple layers of our consciousness all at once, to be fully aware of every bodily internal feeling while hazily hearing and seeing every ambient sound and sight: to be present in this time now while inhabiting the timeless, employing the mind to re-interpret the future and even re-imagine the past. The word reverie recalls to each of us the luxuriant sense of rest we might feel in front of an open fire, perhaps even nodding off, of the body rested and resting deeper, while all the time acutely aware of the sound of rain brushing against the window, the logs crackling, and the sound of children playing mutely in the distance.

~ Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, by David Whyte

Autumn’s heading our way here in the Midwest and Mother Nature, together with that ancient call that comes from deep within our own minds and bodies, invites you and me and all of us to slow down, to empty our hands, and to step out the back door–as David Whyte suggests, “Everything’s waiting for you.”



That deep deep dark

Mary Ellen

We’re nearing the final stretch of February, the longest month of the year for many here in the Midwestern USA, where a bright white blanket of snow belies the underlying deep, deep dark. A fertile dark where the makings of a resplendent Spring are already underway, bulbs and blooms, rhizomes and saplings and every species of moss all destined for an immensity of green teeming with vitality and aliveness, none of which would be possible without the irrepressible nourishment and unshakable sustenance and stillness of a deep, deep dark.

All that we are, or ever hope to be, began in a dark place. Darkness is our first reality.  

No mud.  No lotus. ~James Crews

Awareness itself, the full light of consciousness containing all that we see, feel, and know, has its suckling roots in the enveloping darkness of the unconscious. Carl Jung recognized the unconscious as a container for the deepest mysteries and the fullest wisdom of our shared collective ancestral heritage, a chorus of knowing that’s singing us onward and outward, upward and forward. Seen in this way, each one of us carries an incubating life force that’s inextricably connected to, and even propelled by, the collective energies of those life forces that came before us, making contact with us in the depths of our sleep, in the deep dark of our dreams. 

You, darkness, that I come from
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!-
powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in night.

~You, Darkness, Rainer Maria Rilke

Today’s climate, with its 24-hour news cycles, stores-that-never-close, lights-always-on-all-the-time, gives dark a bad rap. The necessary dark of fertile inwardness, it turns out, isn’t great for consumerism and commerce. Nature herself is conspiring to turn the lights on—here in the Midwest, we’ve already lost almost 2 hours of daily darkness since the Winter Solstice. All the more reason to remember that we carry our winters within us, that the womb of our connection to our possibilities and potentials is always available if only we’re able, from time to time, to extricate ourselves from all that would have us forgetting that our connection to this nurturing place isn’t contingent on the season, or a Prime membership. It rides on us remembering and then turning our attention inward, befriending again and again, that deep, deep dark.    

Everything vanishes around me, and works are born, as if out of the void.  Ripe, graphic fruits fall off.  My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will.  ~Paul Klee

Photo: Fish Magic, Paul Klee (1925), Philadelphia Museum of Art

Life, whole cloth.

Mary Ellen

You’re having an almost-magical afternoon, brilliant sun with just the right amount of chill in the air to hint that change is afoot, seasonal currents that maybe you’ve grown up with, savor, and now have even have come to need for the steady ground these shifts provide, a dependable anchor that feels both familiar and welcomed. You stop at the store to pick up potatoes, lemons, and parsley for dinner and as you pull into the parking lot, careful to avoid the spot next to the cart caddy, your phone rings.

It’s news of a sobering diagnosis. Or maybe dreaded confirmation that a long-suffering elderly parent can no longer manage at home alone. Your insurance policy won’t cover the claim from last week’s storm damage. Your offer on the new house fell through. Your package was irreparably damaged in transit. The engine needs replacement.

All against the still-darker backdrop of raging wars, a home country in turmoil, Mother Nature, heartbroken.  

In other words, life, just as it is, whole cloth.

And so what a strange impulse, then, to find oneself moved, in response to these concerns and even horrors, to pick up a paintbrush or soldering iron, to feel a poem forming, to hear the musical notes arriving and capturing them from the air to the page. What explains this curious impulse in a dark time? And how to justify the imperatives of these urges, a mandate to bring to fruition that creative something where once there was nothing, when life by her very nature can be so deeply and demandingly grim? Shouldn’t we be spending our time in more useful ways, attending to the pressing issues that threaten and quake rather than occupying ourselves with metaphor, harmony, silent company with the Muse?

Creative urges in response to life’s inherent peril are not new. Evidence suggests that our earliest cave dwelling ancestors, whose daily existence was moment-to-moment palpably uncertain, nevertheless devoted time, attention, and care in placing a warm hand on a cold cave wall and, with a mouthful of ochre, blowing indelible proof of their presence for all who would follow. Too, visitors to these caves today find themselves thwarted by stringent measures to restrict the all-too-deeply-human impulse to place their own hands atop these ancient prints, as if to connect with the ancestral spirit that says, “You, too, are here, and triumphant.”

For many artists, these urges are spawned by the inherent hazards and turmoil of life, fueled by the very forces that make daily existence feel perilous or, at the very least, viscerally uncertain. These impulses, and the works that emerge from them, form a kind of container that helps the artist to bear those precarious parts of life that test and threaten us all. In Kay Jamison’s words, artists surf in waters that others drown in. 

In this way, artistic practice is seen as less discretionary luxury and more vital necessity, not only for the artists themselves but also for those who appreciate these creative works, though even when the canvas, manuscript, or musical score is enjoyed by no one other than the artist her- or himself, it’s often every bit the buoy. My 90-year-old father picked up a drawing pencil for the first time in his 60’s, moving to watercolors in his 70’s. Harboring no gallery aspirations whatsoever, he describes his art practice in that warm-paneled basement studio as “a world all its own.”

“I leave it all behind and step into another place altogether. It helps me feel happier and more hopeful.”

In Art as Therapy, Alain de Botton writes:  

We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope. Today’s problems are rarely created by people taking too sunny a view of things; it is because the troubles of the world are so continually brought to our attention that we need tools that can preserve our hopeful dispositions…If the world was a kinder place, perhaps we would be less impressed by, and in need of, pretty works of art. One of the strangest features of experiencing art is its power, occasionally, to move us to tears; not when presented with a harrowing or terrifying image, but with a work of particular grace and loveliness that can be, for a moment, heartbreaking.

For makers and appreciators, works of art—small and great—affirm an allegiance with immortality against all that reminds us we’re not in charge and we’re not here forever. Art-making offers a sturdy alcove that can hold the very best and worst of what life delivers on a daily basis. Far from being a dispensable extravagance, creative practices offer artists a storm cellar and safety shelter for a life that can turn in an instant, then settle once again.

And again…and again.

You Are Standing at the Edge of the Woods
by Mary Oliver

You are standing at the edge of the woods
at twilight
when something begins 
to sing, like a waterfall

pouring down
through the leaves.  It is
the thrush.
And you are just

sinking down into your thoughts,
taking in
the sweetness of it—those chords,
those pursed twirls—when you hear

out of the same twilight
the wildest red outcry. It pitches itself
forward, it flails and scabs
all the surrounding space with such authority

you can’t tell
whether it is crying out on the
scarp of victory, with its hooked foot
dabbed into some creature that now

with snapped spine
lies on the earth—or whether
It is such a struck body itself, saying
goodbye.

The thrush 
is silent then, or perhaps 
has flown away.
The dark grows darker.

The moon,
in its shining white blouse,
rises.
And whatever that wild cry was

it will always remain a mystery
you have to go home now and live with,
sometimes with the ease of music, and sometimes in silence,
for the rest of your life.

Image from Still Life with Remorse, Maira Kalman (front flap)

The elevated response

Mary Ellen

By now you’ve probably heard the story, that eagle-eyed readers perusing the most recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary spotted the disappearance of a number of nature-based words. Words like blackberry, acorn, minnow, and fern—gone. Why? To make room for words from the lexicon of digital technology, such as analogue, broadband, cut-and-paste, and voicemail.

Petitions ensued with over 50,000 signatures garnered. An open letter to Oxford University Press, the publisher of OJD, signed by Margaret Atwood and twenty-seven of her well-published compatriots, urged “that a deliberate and publicised decision to restore some of the most important nature words would be a tremendous cultural signal and message of support for natural childhood.”

We recognise the need to introduce new words and to make room for them and do not intend to comment in detail on the choice of words added. However it is worrying that in contrast to those taken out, many are associated with the interior, solitary childhoods of today. In light of what is known about the benefits of natural play and connection to nature; and the dangers of their lack, we think the choice of words to be omitted shocking and poorly considered.

The Guardian

And then there’s this:

The Lost Words, a large, enchanting book by British writer and University of Cambridge Professor Robert Macfarlane, with illuminating watercolors by Jackie Morris, celebrates twenty of the nature words that had been removed from OJD. The Lost Words is a “spell book,” poetic celebrations of each of these words that are meant, according to Macfarlane, to be spoken aloud, encouraging young and old readers alike to rekindle their connections to kingfisher, otter, weasel, and wren, beckoning them back into common use with something akin to poetry or song.

Speaking of song:

We humans don’t often head for the watercolors or the piano when we find ourselves up against something we oppose, to say nothing of the deeply disturbing or even horrifying. Not every problem lends itself to the elevated response, though memories of Vera Lytovchenko playing her violin in that Ukranian cellar as bombs dropped overhead remain clear in my mind.

I often think the gap in our speaking about and for justice, or working for justice, is that we forget to advocate for what we love, for what we find beautiful and necessary. We are good at fighting, but imagining, and holding in one’s imagination what is wonderful and to be adored and preserved and exalted is harder for us, it seems.

Ross Gay, in conversation with Krista Tippett

I only know that when I come across this kind of elevated, transcendent response, I’m so deeply moved, so indelibly touched by what’s possible, for the human spirit, for our world and our future. Art can do this, as it so often has, reminding us of what we’re made of, the stuff of stars.  

Listen to the call of the genuine within you.

Mary Ellen

Do you, though? Do you have to explain? Right now?

Vital, irreplaceable energy is expended in the act of explaining, and especially so in explaining too soon. Canadian author and painter Robert Genn observes: Your own words can steal the thunder of your idea more easily than the negativity of others. 

The rush and even a palpable urgency to get fresh creative work out on social media, to invite everyone into one’s own creative process as it’s on its way to becoming, has been the unquestioned standard practice for some time. Artists well-served by this approach describe the generous climate of community afforded by IG and other creative platforms, along with the warm feelings of support found in these spaces where it’s become possible, in Lynda Barry’s words, to do this thing alone together. Too, there’s the tactical, instructional, information-sharing supports made readily available, i.e. How do I protect my watercolor paintings from UV damage? And the exposure and reach for sharing one’s creative work with the world has been a game-changer on virtually every front.

I’m less convinced, though, that the press to be public, especially in the early stages of the creative process, serves all makers. I know of a number of practicing artists, and have read about many more, who go to almost any length to protect that precious arena of initial creative incubation, that private domain of curiosity and imagination that these makers feel is best inhabited alone. 

We’re all hungry hunters, active participants in this mysterious, astonishing life, all of us hard-wired to be captured by enchanting curiosities, to find ourselves irresistibly drawn to those singular mysteries and fascinations that hold as-yet-not-fully-understood significance for us. We find ourselves drawn though we’re not always sure why at the start. An enlivening process in its own right, this inner summons for some of us needs protection now, in a noisy world that can place greater importance on influencing and collecting followers than that more vital task of following one’s inner creative Northstar.

We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure: our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light much too early and too often; our best qualities squeezed too soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others. What is real is almost always, to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence. 

~ David Whyte, in Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words

The energy, vitality, and aliveness that propels the very forces of nature come to life within us, too, made accessible through the quietest of curiosities, these “infinitesimal specks of the celestial,” as Anne Lamott describes them, these “quiet miracles,” John O’Donohue notes, “that call no attention to themselves,” if only we’re awake enough to notice, to feel that irresistible fascination, to sense that deep pull and then to follow, all of which can happen in the quietest of ways, far from the madding crowd.

If I succeed in avoiding the hungry, glistening square eye of the phone for at least the first portion of a day, my thoughts feel unhurried, more gentle, more structured, smoother at the edges and more weighted towards the useful, the interesting, the productive, the creative-without-conflict, the settled sort of dreaming. I like the thoughts and ideas I have if I have steered clear of Other People’s Thoughts—how can a person end up anywhere personal and centered first thing in the morning if they’ve listened or read or scrolled at high speed past a thousand stranger-thoughts before they’ve even had a moment to think a single one of their own?

~ Ella Frances Sanders

These curiosities and their invitation to listen closely and then to follow, are the calling card of the true self, the uncurated self that in these moments of activated fascination and wonderment neither can nor cares to trade the impending adventure for any sort of obligation as to what one’s followers may want. 

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources.

~ Wendell Berry

Heeding the call of one’s own true self is the quintessential followership worth preserving at any cost. Yet how can we attend to the call of the true self against a backdrop that favors the followers—What do the followers want?

In what is perhaps the human version of the Heisenberg Principle, we change a bit, and sometimes dramatically, when we’re being watched, as compared to the unmitigated freedom afforded by those places and spaces in which we’re alone, really alone, without the burden of having to prematurely share any thoughts or instructions, without having to do any sort of persuasion or convincing.

When the followers want what your own true self wants, you’ve landed on the sweet spot, the zone, you’re in the flow, on your way. Too often, though, following the followers can lead too many too far from home.

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

~ Howard Thurman

In a world filled with influencers, there’s only one who’s worthy of full possession of you.

We can ignore the call of the soul and still have a fulfilling life, or we can heed its wisdom and experience times of deep joy and contentment. While we go through that process, home remains, whether in our hearts or in reality, the place of security and nurturance necessary for our psyche. It remains the envelope into which we retreat for privacy and intimacy, which reflects who we are as individuals and as members of society; that is essential for our well-being. But it may not be enough. The garden may beckon us also, or the wilderness, the ocean, the landscape, wildlife. We must heed that call too, for deep within it, the soul is asking for attention.

~ Claire Cooper Marcus, House as a Mirror of Self

Seized by beauty

Mary Ellen

It happened last month. I’d gotten flowers from my husband for our anniversary, a crisp collection of crimson, ochre, and cinnamon blooms surrounded by russet-colored oak leaves, seed pods and assorted greenery. Captivated by the autumn flowers and foliage, inhaling deeply, fingering the seeded eucalyptus and the golden mums, I found myself, and I know this sounds strange, seized by an inexplicable urge to jump into the vase. For a few fleeting moments, I could feel myself nestled in the warm company of those sunflowers, lilies, and what I thought was a decorative wooden fan but later learned was a large, glorious dried mushroom.  Almost as soon as it arrived, my Alice in Wonderland fantasy faded and so I carried the vase outside and sketched the bouquet in all its radiant glory, backlit by the sun.

Can you remember the last time you were seized by beauty? Stopped in your tracks by the colors, the textures, the scents and the sounds? Compelled to touch, to really look, to know with your nose? Intoxications like these, to borrow Beryl Markam’s words, feels like extra life. Do you remember autumns as a kid, captured by the reds and golds against a cloudless chilled-blue sky, rolling in crisp umber leaves, the crunch so close to your ears, that earthy smell, pulling leaves out of the collar of your coat? It occurs to me that my looking glass fantasy was most likely my own body remembering some of those early immersions into fall, into life, and longing for them still.

Attention generates wonder, which generates more attention and more joy. Paying attention to the more-than-human world doesn’t lead only to amazement; it leads also to acknowledgement of pain.

~Robin Wall Kimmerer

What seizes me most, though, about the particular beauty of autumn is that I succumb to it again and again with fully-informed consent, knowing all the while that this splendor will end, and almost always before I’m ready. I began this post a month ago and already the crimsons have dimmed, same for the ambers and saffrons, imperceptibly at first, but there’s now a fuller fading underway that won’t stop until the whole scene is one muted brushstroke of cool, uneventful gray.  That beauty fades, though, only magnifies the urgency of surrendering to loveliness now, what Brian Eno refers to as The Big Here and The Long Now. Why should the certainty of an end dilute by even a single drop our willingness to be captured and enlivened, even ignited, by beauty? If Dostoyevski is right, our world will be saved by it.

Nobody Cares

Nobody cares if you stop here. You can

look for hours, gaze out over the forest.

And the sounds are yours, too–take away

how the wind either whispers or begins to

get ambitious. If you let the silence of

afternoon pool around you, that serenity

may last a long time, and you can take it

along. A slant sun, mornings or evenings,

will deepen the canyons, and you can carry away

that purple, how it gathers and fades for hours.

This whole world is yours, you know. You can

breathe it and think about it and dream it after this

wherever you go. It’s alright. Nobody cares.

~William Stafford

Let the bacon burn.

Mary Ellen

My husband and I have harbored the same wish for almost 30 years now—that owls would build a nest in our yard. We’ve heard them in the distance, as we’re falling asleep and sometimes in the wee hours of the morning, the air poignant with their deep, minor-key hooting and cooing, and yet we’ve never seen signs of a nest. Occasionally we’ve spotted one soaring across the sunsetting sky and there have been a couple of times over the years when a pair of them appeared to be circling over our yard during nesting season, only to settle in at a property across the way.

Then last year, almost overnight, a fortress-of-a-nest appeared at the top of the old growth oak just behind our garage and for a brief moment it seemed as if our owls had arrived, only to learn that the builders weren’t owls but rather a pair of peregrine falcons, known for their voracious appetites, favoring songbirds as a particular delicacy, soon to include the beloved orioles and finches that frequented our hanging feeders (which we had no choice but to resolve by leaving them empty).

So imagine my delight when about a month ago, as I was filling the tea kettle one morning, just before dawn, I glanced out the window and saw this:

A great-horned owl, perched right next to what had been last year’s falcon nest. I hightailed it over to Wikipedia to learn that, yes, owls will do this, take over the nest of another bird.

Soon to be followed by this:

Preened by their mom and fed by their dad, these owlets had earlier on taken to careening their fuzzy little necks over the side of their crib to see where their folks go when they take off. I’d catch their gaze, too, every morning as I stared back from just outside our back door, a practice that continues today.

I wish so much that I could capture the magic that these exquisite creatures lend to my life. I bolt out of bed in the morning and rush home at the end of the day with unbridled eagerness to see them. The inescapable wildness of their existence—unprotected as they are from icy snows and torrential rains, feeding on prey dropped from the talons of their elders and facing the screeching return of the peregrine that yesterday circled the two young ones who stared up with fixed gaze from the coveted shelter of that falcon’s former home, permeating the atmosphere with such palpable threat and fear, in these owlets and also in me, only to fly off without incident—all of this somehow offers extra life, something altogether vibrant and alive, something ancient and eternal breaking through the ordinariness of what had heretofore been my regular life.

Which brings me to the bacon. We were making breakfast yesterday morning and I’d put bacon in the oven, taking note that in about 19 minutes it’d be done. Rounding to the sink, I glanced out the window to see that these little ones were taking their first, tentative steps out of the nest. I grabbed my camera and dashed out the door. Assuming the position, my body a tripod of sorts, the strap pulled taut around my neck and arms extended, steady lens on this moment, I can’t honestly say that I forgot about the bacon. It was a conscious thought, a question really: Which would you rather have? Bacon? Or this?:

I’d sacrifice every slice of bacon I’d ever have in my life to not miss this.

These owls will launch soon and the portal to all of this extra life will have closed once again, for the time being. When these eternal cycles of birth and growth, flight and soaring, decline and death—true for owls and all creatures, and also you and me—break through the temporal tasks of bill paying, laundry, and bacon cooking, life’s as good as it gets. Kairos erupting into chronos—I’m wishing for more of this, for myself and for you, for its nourishment and its sustenance. Can we ever get enough?

Eternity isn’t sometime later. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. 

~ Joseph Campbell / The Power of Myth

Hope

Mary Ellen

The winter solstice, now just days away, will plant us once again in the season’s deepest darkness. How best to navigate under these shadowed conditions? “Hope begins in the dark,” says Anne Lamott, and while I agree I also know that hope is stronger when it’s been fortified by the light in all its many vessels–the stars, the sun, the effervescence of the human spirit when it refuses to stay buried for long. Krista Tippett offers a primer on hope, a workout regimen of sorts emphasizing hope’s inherent muscularity and underscoring the need for consistent strengthening if it is to serve when we need it most.

I think about those who embody hope, maestros of hope who unhesitatingly share their supply with the beleaguered or bereft, be it a neighbor or a stranger. I’m appreciating now more than ever those who’ve promoted and practiced hope on a wider scale, whose very lives have been a lighthouse for a community or a nation. On this, the anniversary of his death, I think of Václav Havel:

The kind of hope I often think about (especially in situations that are particularly hopeless, such as prison) I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul: it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.  

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.

While it’s true our world needs all the ambassadors of hope it can get, it’s as true that any one of us who can offer a dependable spot of light will help.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul-

And sings the tune without the words-

And never stops – at all –

                                   ~ Emily Dickenson

Sometimes the answer is no.

Mary Ellen

The health-preserving—and for some, life-saving—benefits of art-making are well established in scientific journals and psychological literature. For this reason, researchers from various fields of study have for over 100 years sustained their explorations into the nature of creativity itself, garnering greater wisdom and insight into the magic elixer of creativity in ways that have fortified the health and wellbeing benefits of making and creating for the betterment of humankind.

Sometimes, though, these attempts to better understand creativity’s life-enhancing components are met with opposition, often from the artists themselves.  In Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, University of Chicago Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes in rich detail the declines he’d received from writers, painters, sculptors, dancers and business thought leaders in response to his invitation to be interviewed for his research:

Mr. Bellow informed me that he remains creative in the second half of life, at least in part, because he does not allow himself to be the object of other people’s “studies.” In any event, he’s gone for the summer. ~ spokesperson for Saul Bellow

Sorry—too little time left! ~ Richard Avedon

He is creative and, because of this, totally overworked. Therefore, the very reason you wish to study his creative process is also the reason why he (unfortunately) does not have the time to help you in this study. He would also like to add that he cannot answer your letter personally because he is trying desperately to finish a violin concerto which will be premiered in the Fall. He hopes very much you will understand. Mr. Ligeti would like to add that he finds your project extremely interesting and would be very curious to read the results. ~ spokesperson for George Ligeti

I am skeptical as to the investigation of creativity and I do not feel inclined to submit myself to interviews on that subject. I guess I suspect some methodological errors at the basis of all discussions about creativity. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

I’m sorry but I never agree to be interviewed on the process of work. Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty applies. ~ Norman Mailer

I am greatly honored and flattered by your kind letter of February 14—for I have admired you and your work for many years, and I have learned much from it. But, my dear Professor Csikszentmihalyi, I am afraid I have to disappoint you. I could not possibly answer your questions. I am told I am creative—I don’t know what that means… I just keep on plodding… I hope you will not think me presumptuous or rude if I say that one of the secrets of productivity (in which I believe whereas I do not believe in creativity) is to have a VERY BIG waste paper basket to take care of ALL invitations such as yours—productivity in my experience consists of NOT doing anything that helps the work of other people but to spend all one’s time on the work the Good Lord has fitted one to do, and to do well. ~ Peter Drucker

Hearing no can be hard. I’ve heard my fair share and two in particular come to mind, the first in the early 1990’s, when I was working on my doctoral dissertation. I’d been captivated at that time to learn that a disproportionate number of accomplished artists had suffered the loss of a parent in early life and so I explored in my research the premise that creativity might be a form of grieving. I focused my study on Sophie’s Choice, a historical novel by William Styron, who’s mother died when he was 13 years old. I wondered whether it might be possible to speak directly with the novelist, rather than relying solely on information available in the literature and press regarding his life and work. I’d send Mr. Styron a letter and not long after received a handwritten notecard that read as follows:

Dear Ms. Bratu,

Thanks for the kind words. I think you have an interesting idea in creativity and early loss and I wish you well in pursuing it in your dissertation. As for myself, I’m afraid I’ve said about all I can say on the subject, so I can’t participate in your project but I do wish you the best of luck in exploring an intriguing subject.

Sincerely, William Styron

The second memorable no occurred in 2015, when the earliest inklings of The Well Within Workshop were beginning to come together, a place where mark-making for its own sake could be championed. I’d long been drawn to the work of a number of prominent mark-makers but none more than Lynda Barry, cartoonist, writer, and professor at The University of Wisconsin, Madison. Then and still, Barry promotes the making of marks and images as a way of amplifying a fuller, richer experience of life (as opposed to mark-making in the service of a finished work of art). I’d hoped to meet with this graphic trailblazer, to discuss how she’d landed on her maverick approach to creative work, to explore the roadblocks she’d encountered from both within herself and the outside world, to learn more about her own personal creative practice, and so forth. I emailed Prof. Barry and received this reply:

Thank you for this good email. I get so many requests like this one and it makes me feel terrible to have to decline but if I didn’t I’d have no time at all for my own work. I’m heartened by the interest in the subject though and I’m glad it’s something that you’re thinking about seriously.

Sincerely, Lynda Barry

If Prof. Mihaly was deterred by the regrets he’d received, it wasn’t for long. He went on to publish Creativity along with other seminal studies for another two decades, interviewing hundreds of creatives, propelled as he was by the desire to learn about and elucidate the very nature of creativity, and then to use this knowledge to enrich creative life for the rest of us.

There’s quite literally no end to what can be said about the foundational nature of creativity or, for that matter, about the power in saying yes to what brings you alive and no to what doesn’t. Having said this, I regret that I can’t say more—I think I hear my watercolors calling.

Elevated spaces

Mary Ellen

I pull into one of the few empty parking spots in the lot at the mall and walk with brisk anticipation through the front door of what used to be a Sears department store. The former home of Kenmore appliances and Craftsman tools now welcomes this:

and this:

and this and this and this:

I would’ve loved to have been in that heady room when this brainchild of an exhibition was born, swaddled as it must have been in the sure cloth of unbridled imagination and expansive possibility. 

Bringing 21st century digital technology to this moment of now-palpable hunger for beauty both ancient and enduring wherever it might be found, Michelangelo’s larger-than-life Sistine Chapel frescos have been brought down to eye level in an exhibit scheduled to travel the world, for a moment landing in Oakbrook, Illinois. Some viewers will no doubt find themselves captivated by biblical themes so passionately portrayed. For me, standing in such intimate proximity to these majestic, sometimes haunting figures with their billowing, colorful robes, animated gestures and evocative expressions, to witness this artist’s discerning command of storytelling and darkness and overarching light and to encounter all of this while standing in the same close proximity that Michelangelo himself stood as he created these works, is daunting to describe. I’d studied fine art in Rome as an undergrad and saw many of the most famous works by Michelangelo, da Vinci, Rembrandt and others in what might be considered their proper places, their true homes. This experience was an altogether different kind of immersion. The sheer feat of 5000 sq feet of painting, the painstaking, neck-aching 4-1/2 years to completion, the imaginative reach that propelled this genius’ magnum opus, and in turn the exhibition itself, with the works themselves all so improbably near, felt awesome in every sense of the word. Like being able to reach up into the sky and pull down Orion or Saturn for a closer look.

I caught Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel: The Exhibition on the final day of its Chicago run last month. It’s moved on to L.A., leaving the former Sears store empty once again.

Empty spaces are invitational, aren’t they? Too, works of art on almost any level have the power to elevate a space. It happened here—a place that once carried Craftsman now ascended to house the work of a Master Craftsman. Michelangelo took note of all of those empty, divided spaces in that 60-foot ceiling and allowed himself to imagine how they might be filled. Imagination itself is a space, with a ceiling that can always be raised.

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim to low and achieving our mark. ~Michelangelo