Inspiration - Stepping into Another World

Before I start rambling I want to say/share three things up front.

One, I am glad there are ALL kinds of people in this world. I would not want everyone to be, think or see things as I do. I recently heard of a young man who walks across the country. That's what he "does". Sometimes he works odd jobs for cash and sometimes he is graced with the kindness of strangers who help when he is in need, And you know what? I think he is as important to our world as the doctor or the sanitation worker or the teacher because, like all of us, his story can inspire. It can ignite an imagination. It can offer hope for those who feel like they themselves are an outsider or a little lost.

Two, I do NOT believe I have the answers for most young or aspiring artists. But I DO believe the way Sofie and I got "here" can be as inspiring and offer a glimpse into another way to live life. Choices that can be made today. Especially in a world that seems hell-bent on sinking everyone into debt, identity crisis and existential despair before they are 25. It's still about choice. And, since we are here to say "Look, we are doing it!", then I think it's worth hammering that point home sometimes.

Three - My Zen teacher used to say that our ambitions and pursuits in life are akin to cupping your hands together and then having someone pour cups of sand into them, each cup representing a different undertaking or passion. One cup at a time, for each new pursuit, passion or focus you take on. At some point, the only way to take on another half cup of sand, a new pursuit or passion, is to let go of some of the sand you already hold or the newly added sand will fall off the sides. Or you can fill your hands by only adding a part of, say,  6 or 7 different cups instead of at the whole of 2 or 3 of them. In addition, some of the sand in your hands also will likely leak out as you try to open your hands wider to hold/make room for the new sand. . . now you don't have a full grasp on any of those passions. . . that simple visual, and recognizing it was perfectly indicative of my own way of trying to do or take on too much,  always made me smile.


Anyway, on with it. . .

One of the things I love about writing little stories, and now a novel about a fantasy world, is that it requires me to get out of my own world. Literally to step, thru the senses and experiences of the characters, into a place foreign and unknown.

But in many cases the inspiration for what I create DOES come from this world we live in, though it may be, as in my case, from another time.

This week I was writing a scene where my character needs to travel quite a distance in one chapter to make some deliveries. I was halfway thru when I realized that I had no idea exactly how far some of the places she needed to go were spaced from each other. They were there on the map, of course, but the terrain, the roads etc had only been lines on that map til then. She had a full basket to carry or barrow to push. Though the light is longest this time year in the story, it seemed a long way to travel . . . at least by our modern ideals.

So I turned, as I always do, to a very detailed book of life in and around early Victorian London.   And what I find when I do this sort of research is exactly how far we have come, and how far we have fallen back, in terms of what we are capable of and/or willing to do in our own daily lives.

Reading about Victorian London market vendors who did not live in the city proper, but who came in from the surrounding countryside, and how they would rise in the middle of the night and start out for the city by 2 or 3AM. They would walk up to 6 or 7 miles (10 or 11KM) pushing a barrow or carrying their goods with them to reach the market. Then they would turn around and walk back home after the market was done or when they had sold out of their goods, often purchasing what they themselves required to haul back with them.

This was NORMAL for so many people.

For folk who needed to do this daily, the idea of leisure time was so rare an occurrence. Other than Sunday after church, they had perhaps no more than a half hour each day before falling into bed exhausted. Then waking four or five hours later to go and do it all over again.

To find that place to write from, when we live now in a world where some people I've known won't get up and DRIVE five minutes to the store at a still reasonable hour because it's "too far" or they're "too tired" is rather hard to comprehend. Have I ever walked/hiked that far when it was not just for sheer leisure or hiking for personal enjoyment? No, I do not think I have. Not once, let alone day after day, carrying a heavy bundle or pushing a barrow, just to survive.

And I do not want to compare myself to those hard working people of the Victorian era but when I read these things I realize that, even today, this is why I seclude myself in the world of my choosing.  Blocking out much of the outside world.

We live in a world that embraces bigger cars and trucks, more conveniences, more ease and comfort at the expense of, literally, our own well-being, more all-in-one stores, faster and further reaching ability to travel and more choices and options on everything and anything you can think of.

Now I am not saying I wish to live in Victorian London. Well, maybe in the world of Larkrise to Candleford. . . the books I've read certainly cover, in all the repulsive detail, the smoky darkness, the noise, the dirt, the smells and the discomforts just as well. But I DO feel that the idea of walking a few miles, of rising before the sun to accomplish or pursue goals, should NOT be a shock or a tribulation given our modern convenience filled world! It's certainly not a true hardship. And it should not come with the cry of others saying "oh, how horrible". Those Victorian market sellers are people who did what they had to in order to survive. To build a life. To feed themselves and their families. It was routine. It was just life.

In building the life I have now, I had to do a similar sort of "research". With the exception of a few Zen monastics I knew there were really so few examples in the city of people who chose to live with less. It seemed so out of the box to set out finding a place to live that was inexpensive, yet felt safe. A small, functioning town where we could get by without a car at all. Without highways and off ramps. Choosing to go with no iPhones or telephone data charges, no cable tv or satellite/dish.  No eating out, which meant cooking all our meals at home from scratch. Using coupons all the time at the stores. Stocking up when something was really cheap. Now, the "research" in this case was close at hand. . . these were all things my mother and grandparents imparted to me, by their own life examples, as I was growing up. They lived thru and were part of the Great Depression and war-era generations that got by and sacrificed to survive. My own mother, a single mother working a service industry job, doing whatever she had to so we could be comfortable and safe. These were the very best examples I could have had, that much I know.

We never had much. . . but I never once felt, or look back now and see, a lacking of anything important in that life we lived.

Somehow over the years those sacrifices and willing choices became the signs of  an "impoverished life". Again, I say, really? I know people who literally cannot cook a meal at home. Who can't navigate a grocery store without calling home on the i-Phone to ask where things are located. . . let alone those who would not be alright for one day without their cell phone on them at all times.

On my last two trips on a city bus before we moved I had two very different experiences that highlight the extremes. In one, on a bus filled with middle school age kids heading home from school. In the two dozen or so of them who likely take this crowded ride home every day, most were just being kids, laughing, yelling, sharing things from their Facebook and twitter feeds on their phones. In the midst of it all sat one girl, headphones plugged into an iPod, sketch pad out drawing away, oblivious to the din around her and, I like to think, daydreaming in a world of her own making. She didn't interact with the other kids at all though she clearly knew some of them. At every stop, as one or more of them rose to leave, they had a dozen kids that they had to say goodbye to as they made their way thru the crowd. When this girl reached her stop, three others got off there too. Yet she kept her headphones on and, with just a wave to another girl sitting nearby, she walked alone towards her home. I got a little misty eyed recognizing something inside her that was also in me at that age and I thought, "there's a girl who is always going to be just fine."

In the second experience, two high schoolers, boy and girl, sat on a far less crowded bus and the girl was sharing with him some of the trouble she was having at school. The boy, his face buried in the screen of his phone, was distracted, obviously. At one point she said something to him about it and he apologized, saying he had to keep an eye on his phone so that he would know where his stop was. She seemed dumbfounded, and said, "But you take the bus home every day!" and he replied, "I know, but I need my phone to tell me which stop is mine." I looked out the windows at the passing street signs, landmarks, restaurants etc etc and wondered how has it come to that? At 12 or 13 I used to navigate the streets of a fairly large city, take streetcars, make transfers and figure out how to traverse the maze-like streets and alleys if I had to get somewhere walking. I worry for kids like that because that young man has created a world too. One that it seems may not work to his best interests going forward. One that, in many ways, may limit his choices and shrink his world in not-so-advantageous ways.

For Sofie (who also grew up in a frugal minded family) and I, the choice was simple. Still is. We would not have been able to get to this point, making a full time living as makers-of-things, working from our home  studio every single day, without having made those sacrifices at the start and without having had the experiences of our own childhoods when we had to rely on ourselves far more than most kids today ever will. We could not have done it without the examples of self sufficiency in our own families that showed us the way.

That's just a fact.

So, was it/is it worth it? No question. Do we feel like we sacrificed anything vital? No, not at all.

Today we are more self-sufficient that ever, I believe. We have zero debt, we have IRA's and a good little savings nest egg.  None of which was a reality when we started this quest together and most of it is possible because of how we chose to live our life and how hard we work to maintain it. Yet we actually make LESS than we ever did working "career jobs" in the city when we couldn't seem to stay ahead.

By the way, we DO have a car now too. One that a little old lady drove once a week or so to the grocery store. Literally! We named her, in honor of Barbara, the woman who owned it for it's first 24 years, hence the name "Babs".  So when we got Babs, that 24 yr old car had all of 16.000 miles on it. The woman's son, who was a friend of mine, just wanted the blue book value. . . which was $300.  Babs runs like a dream and we continue to treat it as the previous owner did, driving it mostly for necessity too. We have had to put gas in it just twice since February. :) Our mechanic tell us if we take care of it as we are, she'll outlast most cars a quarter her age.

What did we give up then? Well, it's a short list. Being close to family. City conveniences. Looking outside of ourselves for entertainment. But even giving up those few things brought more "perks. . . less obligation, less opportunity for frivolous spending, less anxiety and, as far as "entertainment" goes,  I personally have read more books in the last five years than in the previous 20. As a child, reading and discovering new books and new worlds was my salvation. . . so that has been like finding an old friend again.

I've had people tell me outright,  "Oh, I could never live like that." and "You sacrifice so much!"

So much?  To enable me to do the thing I've wanted to do all of my life instead of wishing and just shrugging my shoulders at the seemingly impossible thought because I won't entertain the idea of "world-building" a life that this can support? Those are the folks that I want to remind of what daily life was like for most people just 150 years ago. Heck just 40 years ago. Remind them of the days when, say, TV was free and you had to get up off the couch to change the channel . . . and likely get up again in 5 minutes to mess with the rabbit ear antennae to get the station to come in halfway clear.

Seriously, it was not that long ago that even those simple, everyday things were very, very different.

In writing stories about a world like the Bewildering Pine, it feels like such a comfort to dive in, once again, to creating another way of life. To explore world-building thru these tales of many different elven folk and the secrets their little world hides. It's not a moralistic tale at all or, at least, not in it's planning. The whole of the original plan really was to take two or three dozen of "those would be great characters in a book" people I have known or met in my life and set them at odds as elven folk within a world that is not quite what it seems. Each with their own part to play be it part of the larger quest or just figuring out how to live their own small lives and be true.

The book is also a nod to my own family roots. To that ancestry and their new beginnings. To the changes that passing time brought in their world and even to the lost language and customs of the "old country" they left behind.

Mostly though, it's just another way of continuing what I have been doing my whole life. Creating a secluded, safe world where I can disappear and let my own imagination be the only guide thru.

On the written page or in real life (and real life is what I am talking about here!) it's all really just a matter of world-building and, in world-building, one thing remains the constant. . .

ANYTHING is possible. You just have to create it!!

And as for that Zen lesson I mentioned, it took me awhile to get it. . . in response I used to raise my hands up in front of my teacher and say. . ."Good thing I have large hands!" :)

xo
nicolas

Giving Imagination It's Space or. . . the Zen of Creativity

(1)  There was a time where I found myself very much a student of Zen.  It began at an early age when I came cross a book on Zen Buddhist beliefs n the first New Age bookstore in the fairly traditional town I grew up in. I was 12 or 13 at the time. . .

In browsing the pages I found that so much of what I read seemed to go along with what I already felt about life at that early age.  Later, when I moved across the country, I began attending meditations  and weekend retreats through a monastery nearby.  I loved the simple structure of the monastic days/routines such as the rising at 4am for meditation because, as my teacher explained it, "that's the time before the brain kicks in and takes over." There is work, meals, quiet time, meditation and sleep. A simple routine.

One of the most common comments one will hear after such a weekend from the laypersons attending is this: "I wish I could carry this feeling I have when I am here back to my regular life/world/"

(2)  As I tend to spend many hours thinking about, and revisiting, my childhood I can recall that all of my favorite and most creative games (especially those played and created alone) were a product of reworking and recreating their parameters and scenarios time and again. The thrill of pretending to be a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt is immediate to a 9 yr old boy. . . but it is so much better after weeks of making dozens of tinfoil votive statues and royal jewelry, fashioning a crook and flail and other  treasures out of cardboard, gold paint and plastic gems. . .   and even painting the inside of your closet to look like an Egyptian tomb! That takes time.

Some of those favorite games took years to reach the stage I ultimately remember today. Nothing was ever perfect "as-is" , even in that childhood state of having all the time in the world to indulge our imagination that we sometimes wish for as adults.

(3) There are, in my way of seeing it, many similarities between Zen mind and Child mind. There is a simplicity to both that sort of suspends the normal, over-worrisome adult brain. You know, the one we've all come to  "develop" with all of it's rigid beliefs and time-clock structures.

To be sure, we cannot go back and live completely as a child again and the monastic life is certainly not for most (including myself) but what I can say is that both offer clues and lessons as to how, as an adult, to get deeper into what you wish to ultimately create by letting go of all that keeps you from doing it!

Simplicity is what makes the monastic life work and what creates the feeling of calm and "peace of place.". It is not cluttered, is often cloistered, and based on a very simple and set routine. There is no one in this world who would not benefit from scheduling their creative time a bit more, paring down the distractions and number of people/events committed to,  and saying no to a few of the adult distractions that hobble us all on this path.

And if you can, doing so when the mind is least active, early morning or late night when the world is silent around you, is a good starting point!

From the Child mind there is no one who would not benefit from making time to allow the imagination to just run wild with no time limit/clock and no pressure to "achieve" anything. Not judging the results and working and reworking the creations made while giving them time to develop and become their best.  At 11 years old you don't think, "I need to perfect this game or craft by the time I am twelve or I am done with it!" You just do it because it is what you are wishing to do and you enjoy it. There's the key to adult creativity. . . 

This is one of the main reasons that, on a day where I may have 3 or 4 custom orders to work on or finish, packages to ship and message to reply to, I will often begin something completely new in the middle of it all. If only for 20 minutes or so. . . just to keep the child mind happy too :) 

(4) At the core. . . resilience.

I've never come across anything that can teach someone the workings of this little, invaluable key to life. Mostly because it too is a practice and not truly inherent to most of us. But resilience is a part of both Childhood and Monastic life. Kids usually do not give up on anything if left to their devices AND not made to feel a sense of failure. I am fortunate that despite having a Mother who thought everything creative was a waste of time and/or money, I had a grandmother who was a creative force and who always gave me the loving support needed to keep me going. It is worth mentioning that I also seem to have an inherent drive that kicks in as soon as I am told I can't do something.  So, in that way, I have to be thankful for Mom too. I stuck it out on things I might have given up on because of her negativity.  It's the stubbornness,more than a resilience, I inherited directly from her. :)

In the monastery, if one does not have a focused or centered day. . . or if one has a completely blissed out perfect day of awareness. . . well, in both cases, there is always tomorrow. Because it is all you have to do. Get up and do it again tomorrow. There is no fail or succeed. 

This is how I have approached my creative work/life. Whether today, sales are great, my work becomes more and more requested and desired. OR I sell nothing and no one responds to it at all. It's the SAME to me. Tomorrow will be another day. Get up, put on the hot water for coffee, sit down and create.

(5) The simple,workable equation for deeper imagination is this: . Create, recreate, and then recreate some more.
Or as it might be notated

c + rc² =  good

Imagination, at it's deepest levels, takes time, space, focus, some form or shape of routine and a commitment to it to access the deepest parts of it. We are all creative, of this I have no doubt. But how deeply we go with it is,in the end, a huge factor in what we create and how much it resonates with the audience or buyer we seek and, most importantly,withiourselves.

The adult measuring stick of "how busy = how successful our life is" is just about as far from deep creativity and imagination as we can get. Don't measure the time spent creating anything in hours, days, years or by a measure of success or failure. Let the timeless child, the queen of years, the infinite soul have reign over that and let the inner monk have his or her due when it comes to creating a bit of practical simplicity, silence, solitude and routine.


(6) A last thought. . .

I know many artists who think the key to a happy and creative life is to seek out everything life has to offer. New people, new places, classes, outings, happy hours, social media, organizations, new experiences and adventures great and small. They're so busy they swear there's a need for a planner and a personal secretary to keep up with it all. They are also, at the same time, always talking about what they want to do with their art, writing that great novel, saying something important, expressing their soul. . .  and vowing how they'll, one day, have a "regular" creative practice. 

I also, as I type, know more than a handful of artists who make their living completely from their art.

I do not know a single person who is a member of BOTH of the aforementioned groups.



<>OOo<> <>oOo<> <>oOo<>


Happy June everyone! May it be the start of a creative and deeply imaginative summer. . .

XO
nicolas

PS. . . those days as a Zen novice did indeed filter into my world fo creativity too. :)

My mini Jizo statues. Protectors of all spirit travelers, children living and deceased and mothers.