CREATIVITY AND OTHER LIFE QUALITIES: CREATIVE SOULFULNESS

Friday

CREATIVE SOULFULNESS

What inspires you? Of all the activities you're able to do, which is it that compels, motivates, or drives you? You know what I'm talking about--what really gets your creative, competitive, or compassionate juices flowing?

Is it travel or cooking? Discovering or sharing something new? Building or taking something apart?

And how much time do you actually spend doing this thing that energizes your body, mind, spirit, or all three?

Does it involve animals or people? Music or art? Is it more a practicing and acting out, or a contemplating and be-ing within? Participating or observiing, serving or receiving? Sorting and finding relationships among things, or building and attending to relationships with others?

What would you have to do to spend even an extra hour a day doing this activity that would enrich your life and, most probably, the lives of those who love and are loved by you? Think about it.

For your journal or discussion. On Perspective:

(Nuestra Madonna de la Smithsonia)

What's it like to be

1. the new kid?
2. the mouse caught by the cat?
3. the artist at the gallery opening?
4. the tourist or the sales clerk at a strange gift shop in a far away land?
5. the hiker fallen into a ravine or the rescuer approaching the precipice?

What do they perceive, think, feel?

In Carolyn Kizer's book, THEODORE ROETHKE--On Poetry & Craft, the author reveals that Roethke said many useful things in his classes. He urged his students to "think of a poem as a three-act play, where you move from one impulse to the next, and a final breath."

For Southern and Central California poets and artists, two readings you might appreciate:

9/8, 2:00, Avenue 50 Studios, Highland Park
9/14, 4:00, Granada Books (the new bookstore), Santa Barbara (on State St., Downtown).

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.