This was a strange week for me. Strange in that I didn’t create much of anything. I cleaned. It was our turn to host our annual party, so me and mine spent most of our time doing things we hadn’t done for a while—preparing the house for guests.
I did things straight out of books—I took down drapes and washed them, I emptied a room and scrubbed the walls. And while the house looks great, this overdrive into overdue housekeeping didn’t leave much time for anything else—or bandwidth. I didn’t query or write. Like I said, it was strange
Strange especially in how flat the week felt to me. There wasn’t much sparkle or flash. By Wednesday, I started to worry it might never come back. The lack of a creative spark left me feeling lonely, like my best and dearest friend had left with no forwarding address.
The interesting part of the lack was feeling it, actually noticing that my brain wasn’t sparkling with ideas for poems or novel scenes like usual. For about a half a day, I started to worry that I might never have another creative idea again.
Salvation came in a strange form. I’d checked out Neil Gaiman’s “Norse Mythology” on a whim, to give my mind some fresh ideas. Before the intro was even over, I’d learned that the Norse saw squirrels as messengers that relayed gossip from eagles to snakes. Suddenly, boom—there it was, and idea for a poem based on something that had happened to me the day before.
The day before, I’d walked into a pine forest. Under the tall trees, a noise sounded over my head, a flutter and flap following me from crown to crown. It was subtle, but startling, and startlingly creepy enough to make me stop in my tracks and shout, actually shout, “Who’s there?!”
That question will never get answered. My screaming scared off the mysterious thing I actually kind of wanted to see. The next after noon was when I learned about squirrels bearing messages from eagles. That very evening, I walked back into the pine trees, and the poem came to me.
I opened my Notes app and recited as I walked under the tall trees. The words flowed from me, out of my mouth, into a Note, all nicely typed out and ready to email to myself to tinker with and polish into a poem. When the words ended, a wave of relief washed over me.
And a flood of gratitude poured in. Gratitude for all the days that spark is there. Gratitude for finally appreciating it, not apologizing for it, like I often do. Finally, after all these years, I saw myself as a creative person, a lucky one, one who walks around drawing parallels between this world and that ‘other’ one, the larger poetic one.
In a way, it’s funny that I didn’t notice the presence of the creative spark in my daily life until I noted its absence. I must admit, life felt pretty flat when nothing stood for anything else, when there was no double meaning to nearly everything I see, no sparkling inspiration.
So, even though it was a weird week, it was a great one because two things happened—I learned to appreciate my creative spark. And I wound up with a very clean house
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Ahh.. the art of paying attention & appreciating it All! Great hat too👏 thank you Lulu
I like the backstory of this weeks prompt.