To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
Some places inspire creativity. Recently in Japan, I visited Shinjuku Gyoen and it is such a place. You arrive there mostly via train to Shinjuku, apparently the busiest train station in the world. It’s a short distance that you walk from there, surrounded by people, tall buildings, lights, traffic, signs and noise.
You orientate yourself through the ticket office, the pathways and a forest with the tips of tall buildings from streets away peeking though the canopy.
You then find yourself in a place that opens into the greenest heart of peace.
In that space, there are painters beneath trees, beside the water, their easels before them, an eye on the view and their backs turned away as they concentrate. There are others like me, taking photographs, striving to capture the light and peace of that place to take home somehow.
Reflections of clouds in the water, the roundness of trees balanced in the air, the greenness like a balm, gentle canopies and vistas framed. The garden is designed to invite you to stand and make your own landscape.
It’s a place where creativity happens and is fostered, where you can be at peace in a place of beauty and feel yourself grow like the trees and blossom like the flowers.
You can see why people are drawn there to create. Or if like me, you come without this prior knowledge, you might be surprised at what you find there and find a part of you reignited as you walk, trying to fashion a vision of this place to hold onto and call your own.
The thoughts and images linger and I try to capture them again here as stepping stones to trace my way back to a creative flame I can rekindle.
Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, You Learn by Living (1960)
I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
My daydreams are nearly all of country cottages, of little gardens, of ‘settling down’ with flowers in vases and coloured curtains. I don’t think of backaches, dish washing.
I want to live amongst things that grow, not amongst machines. To live in a regular rhythm with sun and rain and wind and fresh air and the coming and going of the seasons. I want a few friends that I may learn to know and understand and talk to without embarrassment or doubt.
I want to write books, to see them printed and bound.
And to get clearer ideas on this great tangle of human behaviour.
To simplify my environment so that a vacillating will is kept in the ways that I love. Instead of pulled this way and that in response to the suggestion of the crowd and the line of least resistance.
‘A Life of One’s Own’, Marion Milner, 1987 Virago (first published, 1934) p51
‘Transcend’
Verb:
to rise above or extend notably beyond normal limits
to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of: OVERCOME
Middle English, from Latin transcendere to climb across
from www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transcend
That’s what this blog is about and it seems one of the biggest applications of this has been trying to overcome the challenges of writing the blog itself. In the context of a busy work and life schedule, to be able to carve the time and headspace for reflecting and writing here.
If that is all the blog does: document the attempts to carve this unique space then perhaps it has served a useful purpose.
One of the pressures I unwittingly place on myself is the sense of having to write full-blown pieces, fully researched and documented, edited carefully and dense in texture.
I am an INTJ, a Virgo and an Ox – so no surprises there that this should be my natural inclination with such perfectionist tendencies, shoulder to the plough approach and an introverted analytical approach to life.
Yet some of the blog posts I love are more elegant and less dense but have more impact because of this: a photograph or series of photographs and none or few words; a quote with a perfect visual image like Liv White’s wonderful Sunday Reflections; or perhaps a poem or a sequence of more random thoughts like this leading to a new direction (or not).
It’s time for some release of intensity here. I’m currently doing Susannah Conway’s ‘Journal your life‘ e-course and that may be a subtle influence in this direction towards the more natural and spontaneous.
I’m calling this post ‘Thought pieces #1’ – always scary as you don’t always know what is next with #2 and beyond, but here’s to randomness, elegance, spontaneity and more simple flow here to find a stronger and more frequently heard voice between the spaces of an otherwise busy life.
