One Hour in the Snow

It’s the first day of my Spring Break. J & I woke up and turned on the television to see the school closings ticker at the bottom of the screen and footage of downtown St. Louis covered in snow ... again!

It’s going to sound strange but I get a little unnerved when I have a block of free time. Spring Break! So much to do, so little ...  All the conflicting roles within me start yelling for attention. The Marvelous Mummy says, “Spend time with Sophia or else you’re not a good mother!” The Prissy Perfectionist says, “Get the basement organized, you’re not a good home-maker!” The Good Student says, “You can’t play, we have homework to do.” The Writer says, “Why do you always ignore me? Write our novel!” The Diva says “You don’t look so good these days. You need a facial!” and “Let’s go clothes shopping!”  (Ms. Diva’s a force to be reckoned with).

The thing I notice is that these voices are all pretty critical. They all need to start talking nicely to me! I started panicking on Sunday evening (yesterday) because I wasn’t sure I could please them all. So this morning I wrote for an hour. Then on a whim I grabbed my camera to take some photos of the snow. I’m not a photographer by any means but it was fun. I ended up taking a walk in the snow to our local park. Just my camera and I.

Crazy woman in the snow ...

It felt like one of Julia Cameron artist’s dates. I had to quiet some voices to keep going, “You look like a crazy woman taking photos in the street!” and “You’re going to catch your death of cold” (That’s my mum talking). It was true that taking photos in the snow is odd because everything starts looking monochromatic. Water did start seeping in my boots at a certain point but it didn’t feel too bad.
I took pictures of the little deer statues in one of the houses down the street and the frog in the park. Such artistry :)

A Study of Vlasis Park, St. Louis in Winter :P

I felt happy because by the time I was on the way home, all the voices had stopped.

Happy Froggy

It got quiet for a while. Walking back home along my street it got loud again. The air was filled with the sound of starlings. All the girls: Mummy, Prissy, Student, Diva and I looked up into the trees at the same time.

New life ...

“My my, do you hear that!” We all stood there in wordless unison, breathing the wonder of nature in and out at the same time.

Creativity in the Midst of Tragedy

Yesterday was a tough day dealing with the terrible news coming out of Japan. I was up early with baby girl who has an ear infection. At about seven o'clock I heard the word 'quake' from the radio in my bedroom and I thought, "Uh-oh, here we go again."

I spent the day caring for baby and doing housework; dishes, laundry, and fresh sheets. I flipped between the local news and CNN, checked in with the Yahoo updates. In amongst all of the tragedy I felt sad for the suffering and loss of so many people. I also felt the thrill of fear waiting to hear what would happen with the Fukushima nuclear reactor.

For the last three days I'd been working on an exercise from 'The Creativity Book' by Eric Maisel, in which you create a special ritual to honor your creative dream. You can find the book on Amazon. I'd been struggling since the New Year to carve out a slice of my life in which to write, something I've never committed to despite my long-standing dream of writing a novel. Suddenly *oompf* I felt deflated. None of that mattered any more compared to the events unfolding on the world scene.

It was this idea that there's so much going on in the world that it's frivolous and selfish to write for pleasure and be a creative person when there's so much to be done out in the world that prevented me from writing anything for ten whole years. In one of my favorite on-line communities today I wrote this:

"I'm not going to tell myself any more stories about how I'm not allowed to create because of what happened ... It's daytime in Japan now. The news stories are about the Japanese people waking up to the full extent of the damage. I can't and won't avoid those stories because to offer witness, even silently is to honor the dead and support the living as they negotiate the difficult business of being survivors in the aftermath of such an event. Life is so precarious and precious."

Today I  write, thinking of the suffering people in northern Japan.