CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: MEMORIES AND MYSTERIES (with New Journaling Prompts Added)

Sunday

MEMORIES AND MYSTERIES (with New Journaling Prompts Added)

We landed the Lear Jet on a small airstrip in Socorro, New Mexico. I was a passenger with a few other presenters I'd invited to facilitate new employee orientations. I specialized in organizational development and training. In a room not far from the landing strip, I discovered an antique wooden chest and wondered what was inside. As my musings evolved, I imagined a story unfolding. Eventually, I wrote a song about it which I now use to teach discernment, life re-visioning, and social justice. Here is the song:

Memory or a Mystery (a Waltz)

In an old cedar chest left inside my hotel room
I found a tapestry made on a loom.
Created by someone I never will know--
I thought I heard a voice from long ago.

Chorus:
My life is changing me even as I weave,
And when this day's only a memory or a mystery
I hope the cloth that I've woven is still speaking well of me...
When today is only a memory or a mystery.

When the roads I have chosen are woven in my life
So many colored threads will show the signs
Of deep summer kisses and blue pearl moons
With each love and heartache my soul ever knew...

Chorus:
My life is changing me even as I weave,
And when this day's only a memory or a mystery
I hope the cloth that I've woven is still speaking well of me
When today is only a memory or a mystery.
Copyright 2000, D.M. Solis

Coincidentally, Socorro is the town where my mum was born. It was while doing the "corporate thing" on the trip to this town, that I reconnected with my ancestry. In my Italian Marco Brelli pumps and Evan Pincone petite suit, I stood high on a bluff overlooking the changing colors of the desert on the mesas in the valley below. The sun was hot but the breeze was cool. In it I could almost hear my grandmother's voice from my childhood, how her soft humming would ease my restlessness as she cradled me in her arms.With the fine red dust of Socorro on my shoes, I took the corporate jet back to California. Not long after that my passions for the arts and social justice led me on a new adventure that would change my life completely.

For Your Journal (A few timed writings--don't worry about spelling or punctuation--just write):

1. Tell about a moment in time, what I like to call "a threshold moment," when you could see your past and your future, when you knew the next step was going to literally or figuratively take you from one phase of your life or journey to the next. (5 minutes.)

2. Tell about a mysterious box, bag, curtain, door, pathway, road, garden, room, corridor, elevator floor, lobby, or alley. (5 minutes. Go for 10).

3. Tell about a loss, frustration, failure, or sadness you've been holding onto from long ago or yesterday. Tell how your life would be improved if you cold finally, really let it go. Describe the act of "turning the page" or taking a new road. What will that feel like? What would it mean to you or others if you could do that? Where might it lead you? (Take all the time you need.)

Diane Solis

The poetry of Diane Solis has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, excerpted in Expressive Writing: Classroom and Community, and has been published or is forthcoming in literary journals and magazines, including, America, Big Muddy, The Healing Muse, Hobo Camp Review, The Lost Country, Psychological Perspectives, Sinister Wisdom, Slink Chunk Press and elsewhere. Her chapbook ART SPIRITS, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. A science writer and technical editor by trade, Solis practices contemplative and Zen forms of meditation and travels to remote places to photograph and write about the "wild" she encounters there. She resides on the Central Pacific Coast with her partner.

www.dmsolis.blogspot.com

The Latest Quotes for Contemplation:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. --Annie Dillard

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, age after age, forever. ~ Tagore

I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.... ~ Frank O'Hara

Of all fires love is the only inexhaustible one. ~Pablo Neruda

Prophets are so dangerous because they cry in season and out of season, politely and impolitely, loud and long. ~Joan Chittister

When I say be creative, I don't mean you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem. ~ Osho

There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving. But, who wants easier? ~ Mary Oliver

Without warning, as a whirlwind swoops on an oak, Love shakes my heart. ~ Sappho

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding"

Love many things, for therein lies your true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well... ~ Vincent van Gogh

I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions. ~ Jane Goodall

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone--we find it with another. ~Thomas Merton

I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit.
~John F. Kennedy

I cannot write convincingly about anything that I am not passionate about. ~Darrell Bourque, Poet Laureate of Louisiana

In the lover's heart is a lute which plays the melody of longing. ~Rumi

But perhaps the most important thing about my father was that he taught us the simplest things -- Navajo things -- like how to just sit and be quiet, to blend in and watch, or to move so silently we'd become a part of the forest. My father taught us how to live the concepts of our culture, especially the importance of communicating with the natural world. ~Lori Arviso Alvord, M.D.