Category: moods

Creativity, Current Events, and Cybele

This site is supposed to be about writing, art, and creativity. But I’m so disturbed by current events my creativity is seeping through the cracks of my distress to scream alarms at the people of my nation.

It’s nearly midnight and I’ve already called all the relatives I have in the West a day or two ago because I couldn’t go to sleep on previous nights. I can’t sleep because my country’s politics seem so extreme, so crazy, so like Hitler’s Germany which my Jewish mother fled from in 1938. Now I know what an existential threat is – it feels like the nuclear war will explode any second now, I’m going to step on an ordnance planted on my native soil, someone will suddenly lift a gun to their shoulder and shoot me. 

But it is necessary to be optimistic even now. The seeds of destruction of the United States were planted before our independence, with genocide of Native Americans, with slavery of Africans transplanted to this ground, with the oppression of working class and poor people, squashed by the Calvinist ethic that if you are poor, you deserve your fate. At 66 years of age, I am closer to the end of my life than my beginning, and yet I’ve never seen anything like this in my country. Okay, I have. Racism, class discrimination, oppression of women, and approximately 1/4 of our children living below the poverty line, not knowing where they will sleep or if they will eat today. 

I am not Charles Dickens, nor John Steinbeck, not even Studs Terkel. The people of the United States either have to resist the rise of an autocratic dictator or we will be crushed. 

Hope lies in our independent spirit, our distaste for authority. Getting Americans to rise up may be like herding cats but if we join hands we can maybe find our way to a true fair and equal democracy. If we dream it, it can happen!

#Resist

Today I drew Cybele, the ancient Anatolian goddess of fecundity, of motherhood, of protection. In my mind she is linked with Kali, the Indian goddess of destruction. I seek to channel them, to worship them, to lead to the warmth of the woods and a sunny tomorrow.

Imagination and fantasy is how we recreate the world. If you dream it, it can happen!

What Flower Are You? – A Quiz

To score your quiz add up the numbers you pick. Answers are at the bottom of the page.

A. Which would you rather do?

  1. Dance at a disco.
  2. Read a book by a stream.
  3. Shop.

B. What do you consider one of your most prominent traits?

  1. Creative
  2. Persistent
  3. Honest

C. What pisses you off?

  1. People
  2. Ugliness
  3. Hot days

D. What do you do when you are stressed?

  1. Drink
  2. Socialize with friends.
  3. Exercise.

E. What is your favorite trait in your friends?

  1. Kindness
  2. Creativity
  3. Enthusiasm

If you scored a:

  • 6 you are a daisy.
  • 8 you are a rose.
  • 9 you are a cactus flower.
  • 10 you are a dandelion.
  • 13 you are a lily.
  • Any other number, you goofed at your math. Count again!

Grace

Placid waves

wash warm

Over toes, knees,

belly to breasts.

Drink in sun.

Float

cotton-candy clouds

framing

rose,

lemon,

sapphire

sky.

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Community and Creative Process

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I have lived in artistic communities since early adulthood. I love the energy, feel it even when I am alone in my room. There is affirmation of the value of creating within an art community. There is knowledge that process is important. The energy in a community where people participate in the creative process helps generate ideas, even as we disagree  about the relative value of specific pieces or particular forms of art.
Art for me has been a means of keeping an even keel in a crazy world.
Often when I create, whether a poem, a painting or a song, I don’t fully understand the symbols and juxtapositions of ideas until much later. Art is not a way to recreate reality, but distorts reality in order to fully portray it, like a curved glass will focus the sun’s rays on a single point, and result in a fire.

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photo of Baltimore rapper Wealth making a music video in Savage, Maryland.

 

6/3/2015

Spring is the time of death.
Look out the windows;
Mist and memory drift
from the verdant hills.

At road’s curb,
mangled
bat wing
slate sky.
I drive.
Death lays.