#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Pumpkin sprung from my compost pile
“Brahms once remarked that the mark of an artist is how much he throws away. Nature, the great creator, is always throwing things away. A frog lays several million eggs at a sitting. Only a few dozen of these become tadpoles, and only a few of those become frogs. We can let imagination and practice be as profligate as nature.”
~ Stephen Nachmanovitch
Charlie miraculously lets me sleep in, and I need to, because the doors and windows were open and the coyotes howled and howled and woke me up and woke Charlie up who barked and barked to go out for the party, but finally went back to sleep. I felt all day that I had dreamed of the poet Mary Rueffe, that she spoke to me; but really, I watched a youtube video of her in the middle of the night giving her talk, “28 Lectures,” and I kept watching and dozing, listening and dozing, and I hope some of her brilliance leaked into my subconscious. If I am lucky. So, we walked in bright, refreshing and heartening sunshine and I met a monarch butterfly by the river and some lovely, wet wild grapes by the brook. Then, back in my yard, I looked at the wild, spontaneous growth of all the pumpkins and gourds and squash springing out of my compost heap with their bright yellow blossoms and running crazed all over the poor shrubs I recently planted near there. And I found, when I went inside, the quote by the musician and author Stephen Nachmanovitch, whose book, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, has been a favorite of mine for years. His quote about letting our creativity be as profligate as nature is so heartening. Because it reminds me not to ever feel that any writing is ever time wasted. If the raw material for a poem never gets developed, if a draft of a poem never comes to fruition, if a play script never reaches the stage; it’s okay. I have enough creativity to last me a lifetime. Not everything I write needs to be finished and sent out into the world for it to matter to me. If the bunnies of the yard that Charlie chases daily do not consume the pumpkins, of if the deer or groundhog or other animals don’t get them first, then they will sit on my front step and become jack-o-lanterns and then I will toss the rotten vegetables back into the compost pile and the seeds will nestle into the hearty, rich compost and germinate for next year. I also thought quite a bit today about this blog and the monarch butterfly. How you, my readers, are monarchs. You touch down, you visit me here. I know you are here, I feel your presence, whether you tell me or not. Your visits here make me feel as hearty and necessary as a pollinator. Your attention, your beauty, is necessary to me. It fuels my creative life.
