Month: September 2013

I crawled behind Maria’s vintage hanky’s – soon to be scarves – and was enchanted to enter Hanky World. You can see Maria’s work here.

For the past few months, I’ve been offering Interactive Story Telling – you get to tell the story, not just me, mostly through photos of unique and interesting structures. The other night, more than 100 people posted their stories about what they saw in an old farmhouse photo. This house is one of the most interesting that I’ve photographed, I’ve long wondered about it. You can post your own idea of the story behind this house on my Facebook Page.

I’ll post what I know about the photo after all of you get a whack at it. I am  appreciative and dazzled by your imaginations, and I love the idea of story-sharing, something that has never before been possible between a writer and his or her readers.

Northshire Books of Manchester, Vt. has long been considered one of the best bookstores in America, it is stuffed with good books and knowledgeable people to sell them, the Morrow family, which owns the store has decided to write it’s own good story by dramatically expanding – they have just opened a beautiful new bookstore right in the heart of booming Saratoga Springs. Five or six writers were invited to the store today to celebrate the new store and I spent an hour there signing books with Red drawing crowds. The boy is a natural bookseller, he loves women but he can handle an entire family at once.

Around here, bookstores are thriving, not dying. My local bookstore, Battenkill Books, is having one of it’s best years ever (you can pre-order my new book “Second Chance Dog: A Love Story” from Battenkill Books and Maria and I will both sign and personalize it. You can pre-order the book online or by calling the store at 518 677-2515, they take Paypal and ship anywhere in the country.

Red and I will be back at Northshire in November to read from “Second Chance Dog,” it was wondrous to see the huge crowds pouring through the new store. Individuality and creativity are still important in America.

I took my crystal – soon to be my necklace – and placed it on a stump with the sun behind it, the sun touched the crystal and I felt it’s power. People tell me that crystals are healing – people tell me a million things are healing, and I think if all of the things that people see as healing would really heal, then there would be no illness and death in the world (you would not believe all of the things people tell me absolutely cures diabetes, it is a wonder anyone on the earth has it).

I have my own ideas about healing for me. I think what heals is belief.

I think creativity heals, I worship the creative spark.  And love. And gentleness to animals and people. And connection with other humans. And a love of Mother Earth and an understanding of nutrition and movement. I think meditation heals, and humility and self-awareness. So does forgiveness and openness, taking photos, reading books, walks with dogs, holding my wife close to me and giving thanks for here. For me, blogging heals and writing books.

Everyone’s ideas about healing are as good as mine. I never tell anyone else what is healing for them, only for me. We are not the same, we are all individual, our lives and minds and biology unique. In our arrogance and self-absorption, we are led to believe that what works for us works for everyone, and that we know what is best for others.

Humility teaches me that I do not know what is healing to other people, only what makes me feel better as a human being. I cannot alter the cycle of human life, I will wither and die whether I find crystals or not. And whether I find them or not, I will live a good life for as long as I can.

For me, creativity is not simply only writing books of poems, taking photos or painting, singing or sketching. Creativity for me is the holy spark in us, the thing we were given by our many notions of God that separates us from all other living things. Spirituality is not really about religion for me – more people brutalize and murder other people in the name of religion than any other thing in our history. Creativity is about finding ways to live that are nourishing, that bring light and images and colors and emotions to the world.

Creativity is an ideology, a pathway to spirituality, the very definition of spirituality, it requires us to live in a spiritual way. Creativity challenges me to be self-aware, to look inward, to be authentic. It helps me to see the anger and fear that have corroded so much of my life and to begin to learn how to move behind them. It asks me to find other means of communicating that argument and anger, and to shed the endemic culture of struggle stories and lament that is the currency of so many people in our world.

Creativity helped me to see that that if I wanted love in my life, I need to open myself up to it, to think differently about it. And so it came to me.

Creativity helped me to begin taking photographs, which helped me to see the world anew, to begin to bend my knee to color and light, to literally change the way I see the world.

Creativity helped me to respect death as much as life, and to see one as a part of the other. I do not mourn the things I have lost in my life, I celebrate the things I can have. Everyone I love will die, as will I. I celebrate their lives. Every dog I love will die, and how blessed I am to be able to get another, to love one again. I will never make loving a dog a misery, for me, a gift of creativity.

When I hear about the sad and angry news from Washington, I think mostly of how bereft of creativity our political culture has become, how mired on old ways of thinking, how  differently I have come to see conflict than the people who embrace it as a way of life. People who love history know better than to think conflict works to solve problems.  Creativity is about seeing the world in different ways, about solving problems rather than arguing about them. The creative mind is challenged to think differently, open to new ideas, see the world in different ways.

Creativity requires us to be mindful, to think about lives, our aspirations, to light the creative spark and cherish it more than power or money or position. In our culture, creativity is isolating, it lives on the fringes of our world, it requires patience and strength and discipline, acceptance of the reality that it will most often fail. It is a lonely way of thinking, you will not see creativity people in Washington much or on TV arguing about the world.

Creativity does not make me better than anyone else, or superior to any other way of thinking. It brings me love and peace and beauty, every waking minute of my life.