On Catkins, Cosmos, and Creativity

By Catherine DiMercurio

Feeling creatively stuck is especially challenging when doing creative things is what reconnects us to ourselves. Here, though, the weather is finally unstuck. It is warm now, and not only is there more work to do in the yard, but warmer days also mean that getting outside to run, walk, bike, and hang out at the beach is more appealing. It’s been easy to turn toward those types of activities rather than figuring out how to revive the creative spark.

My topsy-turvy spring forced me to focus on the practical particulars of how to move forward, but also left me feeling unfocused creatively. I simply didn’t have anything left, energetically-speaking, to pour into artistic endeavors.

Like several of the challenges I’ve come up against over the past year, what I’ve been dealing with most recently is something I can’t really share about in a detailed way in this format. Given that in-person, I tend to overshare, it can be difficult for me to exercise restraint in this space. Interestingly, though, I’ve been reading a lot these days about restraint within the context of writing, specifically in terms of character and plot development. It’s been argued that readers today have come to expect things to be spelled out, over-explained, and yet when we as authors trust our readers to connect the dots themselves, the writing can truly shine and the reader’s experience is richer and deeper and more personal. It’s tempting to write in such a way that our readers feel exactly what we want them to, when we want them to. But is there actually value in controlling the experience in that way?

When you look at it like that, it doesn’t matter much what the particulars of my personal experience are as I attempt to reach out to you, as a reader, in this format. It doesn’t matter because you probably also know what it is like to go through a challenging period that you feel obligated to keep a little private. Inside, you’re managing some kind of turmoil, but you still have to go to the grocery store and thank the cashier, perform your job with a measure of excellence, feed and play with the dog, tend relationships, go to the dentist. Sometimes we want to stop all together. We freeze in place, wishing someone could just wake us when it was all over. When the new path forward has been settled upon. Sometimes you even imagine what a luxury it would be to have someone else work out all the details and just point you: this is your path now; it might not be easy but you don’t have to decide anything, it’s been decided for you, just keep walking.

I think the dust will be settling soon for me, at least for now. I’ll learn the new path, and I’m grateful that it revealed itself and that I had people in my corner urging me toward it. And while I’ve been disappointed that through this and other changes, I’ve found it challenging to give my writing the attention it deserves, I’m trying to shrug off the disappointment and tell myself what I’d tell anyone going through a challenging time: Be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace. Work on small creative exercises rather than trying to make progress with on-going projects. There is a way; you will find it.

I think sometimes we waste our creative energy telling ourselves stories about bad things that happen. When life knocks us down, especially after a few consecutive knock downs, it’s easy to wonder something like: why do bad things always happen to me? I’m trying to avoid this line of thinking though, and go the route of the erasure poem. An erasure poem is where you take a section of printed text and strategically strike out words and lines, and the remaining words and phrases create a poem. This is an oversimplification; apologies to the poets. So instead of “why do bad things always happen to me?”, I strike out words and what I’m left with is: things happen. It’s not personal, it’s not always, it’s not just to me, and it might not be as bad as it seems.

While this can take the sting away, it doesn’t always remove the obstacles to the creative flow. But it helps. It also helps to turn toward other creative pursuits. Writing has proved thorny lately, but I played with watercolors recently, and clay, too. Both of those pursuits do wonders for my brain, easing me into that state of mind where thoughts quiet themselves for cherished minutes or hours.

Right now, I’m hoping that I have a break from big changes for a bit, and that things settle down into more mild domestic tribulations, like the irritation of pesky, nearly empty jam jars. I don’t feel like washing them so I never quite use the end of the jam, so they clutter up the fridge door. Or, the adorable bunny that breakfasts on the bright pink and orange blossoms of my newly-planted cosmos and zinnias. Or the way the oak catkins—long, fringed, and the color of toast—have fallen from the red oaks, blanketing the yard and clinging to my dog’s long, fluffy coat like little burrs.

A few months of nothing extra happening sounds like a blissful proposition but I am not naïve enough to expect this. But I am still naïve enough to believe that being grateful for the stretches of calm and peace I do get is some kind of ward against bad things happening. So I will be exceptionally delighted to wash out the jam jars and monitor the bunny situation and painstakingly pluck oak catkins from Zero’s long, fluffy tail. I will be grateful for the mundane tasks that irritate but do not involve upending the normal flow of life.

These days, I try not to expect anything, good or bad, and just take things as they come. For a long time, I still wished and dreamed, but since I’ve moved near the lake, the sense of longing—longing in a large way, not little longings, like hugs and nice weather, a sweet text from an old friend—has largely dissipated. I’m here. I do have the sense that I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m not precisely sure what I’m supposed to do here, as in, is there a cosmic purpose I’m yet to fulfill, but I’m here and it feels like I wanted it to, the way I hoped it would. I feel like that part is settled.

But now I have the feeling that putting down roots is something different than I thought it would be. It’s not enough to have landed here. I look out the window at the flower bed I planted, the one with the zinnias and cosmos, the sage and the daisies and the boxwood, the spirea, lilac, and Russian sage. It all looks so newly planted, so unfilled out, nascent. I can easily imagine how it will look as everything grows, how the perennials will fill out year after year. But right now, every plant is standing soldier-straight in the same position it was in in its little pot from the nursery. I imagine the roots underground not even unfurled yet from the shape of the pot.

I wonder what life will look like at this time next year, when I’ve been here a little longer. If my life will have filled out a little more like the perennials out front. I’ll have stretched and grown twelve months longer. Right now, my dreams are about writing more, seeking out the literary journals and small presses that might be homes for my work. Expanding my proficiency with clay, creating (hopefully) beautiful, functional pottery and finding ways to share it out in the world. I dream about centering this creative work in my life, finding a way for it to live more harmoniously with my 9 to 5 work life.

Sometimes I wonder if my dreams themselves are naïve and simultaneously question whether they’re big enough. But does the rabbit at breakfast dream of anything except the pink cosmos flower? Does the oak catkin dream about anything other than the acorn it will be? Maybe being what I am, who I am, the person unfurling her roots and growing creatively, is all I need to be dreaming about right now. And maybe now that I’m in the right place to do it, it will make sense, it will just be the way it’s supposed to be, all in its own time, without me chasing it or worrying about it or deciding things about it. It will just be. I will be able to just be.

Here’s to being and the kind of growth that happens tenderly and gently, in the warmth of the late spring sun, all in its own time.

Love, Cath

On Creation, Waiting, and Time

By Catherine DiMercurio

I don’t have a record player but periodically I think of getting one and it seems every time I do, it’s after I heard a Tom Petty song. I recently listened to a snippet of an interview with him in which he was talking about the process by which he wrote “The Waiting.” You know that one. The waiting is the hardest part. Every day you get one more yard. You take it on faith, you take it to the heart.

He was talking about how a bit of the melody came to him and he played it over and over again for weeks, and then the chorus, same thing. He just played the same thing over and over. The snippet cut off after he talked about somebody knocking on the other side of the wall telling him not to play it anymore but presumably the rest of the song came to him this way, in pieces, over time.

I wish I could speed up processes sometimes, creative processes, learning processes, healing processes. It’s like I’m always waiting for my ability to catch up with my creative energy. My results don’t often match the vision I had in my head and I’m chasing the kind of book I want to write or piece of pottery I want to create. Or, the life I’m trying to build.

I look around at the things that seem to come easily for people and long for something like that for myself. I feel wildly impatient with my slow pace in nearly all things. Sometimes I feel as though I have the mentality of a perfectionist but not the talent, or results, to show for it. I am not meticulous. I am a messy learner with almost no eye for detail. I am full of earnest trying but am frequently wanting something more to show for the effort than what I was actually able to produce. I wake up too early and agonize over glazes I applied too thickly despite my best efforts in pottery class or fret over stories I’ve been submitting for years that keep getting rejected. I wonder, when is it going to all come together, and, what have I missed?

And then, things come together a little bit, all at once. Last year, I did get two pieces of writing accepted at literary journals and they finally were published this past week, within twenty-four hours of one another. And the glazes I’d been so worried about turned out fine, and I threw well that night at pottery class. I enjoyed it thoroughly, that moment where things coalesced in a brief way, knowing that such moments never promises anything. Any future success in either art form will be just as hard-earned and the waiting in getting there will continue to be the hardest part.

I look at all my impatience and I wonder where it’s all coming from and why it percolates everywhere for me. For all my striving toward self-acceptance, this feels out of place. When I step back, I can see that it isn’t there all the time, but it comes back to me, maybe when I’m feeling low about other things. I am trying to pause and consider why it matters so much that I learn faster, glaze better sooner, write and publish more now, etc. I think a lot comes down to validation.

If I’m producing “good” work in a visible way it’s proof, right? I mean, that’s how external validation works. We believe that if others can see something of our “goodness” or “value” then maybe it’s easier for us to believe in ourselves. Alternatively, it simply is enjoyable to feel seen, to have someone else confirm what we’ve been cultivating in ourselves, i.e., a sense of our own worth. For so long, I thought the goal was to not need external validation, that there was something wrong with wanting it. So, I worked diligently on trying to find where this need arose from in my past, how it came to be that I felt unable to sense my own worth. I work at rebuilding my sense of self in the same way that I create, revise, and re-create art in the mediums I’m working in now: clay and words. I’m continually learning how to be me in the same way, with the same habits of working and trying and reshaping and revising. I hum the same bars over and over for weeks. Still, I’m coming to understand that it doesn’t all have to be internal. We must feel safe and good and loved within our own skin, but it also feels good to have someone tell us good things. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that.

Many people struggle with feelings of not being “enough” or “good enough,” and all for different reasons. I’ve dug into my own reasons, determined to understand them better, because I have found that the only way for me to cultivate healthy self-perspectives and habits is to use precise and loving language in my internal thought processes, language that responds specifically to the lessons and events of my life that wired my brain for self-criticism and an extreme response to anything that feels like rejection.

I am impatient with all this, but I think one of the reasons it takes so long to recover yourself from various types of wounds is that you often can’t face it all at once. It’s too much. It was too much for me to heal in a smooth and linear way and all at once from a twenty-year marriage ending in the storm brought on by my then-husband’s alcoholism and infidelity. Some wounds feel as though they change us at our core, forever, and after bearing the initial brunt of that pain, we begin to understand that the only way to survive it is to take breaks from it. We turn away, we look to others for help. Then we go back to it when we’re strong enough and rested enough.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

What I need is to believe that I have time. That I can keep conquering what I need to, that I can keep writing and learning, that there’s no need to rush. But we live in an urgent world that is always proving that nothing is promised, certainly not how much time any of us have left. But I need to believe that I have time, anyway. That my own pace for healing and nurturing my sense of self, for building my writing self into who she is becoming, for learning all I can in an artform as elusive and slippery as wet clay, is all sufficient. I need to believe that because whenever I try to rush things, something is sacrificed. Whenever I grow too impatient, I wind up falling into a dark place and my energy is then focused on pulling myself out of that instead of all the other things I’d rather be doing.

In a way, that’s my own version of blind faith: that I have time, that we all do. To keep creating the person I want to be, the life I want to have. My pace is neither fast nor slow, just mine, is what I tell myself. The waiting for it all to come together will always be the hardest part, because that’s where all the living is, in the waiting. The moments when things coalesce are fleeting, and the rest is creative energy at work. There is so much beauty and art in the waiting, even if it is the hardest part sometimes.

Love, Cath

On Multitudes and Surprise

By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes we have to listen to our multitudes, and each other’s.

Walt Whitman wrote in Song of Myself, “I am large, I contain multitudes” and I think of the crowd of people in my head and I nod at Whitman in solidarity. Yes, us too, I answer, for me and everyone clamoring. My body is a mouthpiece. The disparate voices wait for their turn to speak. In moments of synthesis, I think about I instead of we, but it isn’t always that way. Sometimes we don’t have a leader making sense of it all for us; sometimes we see each other clearly. It would be easy to call them facets of our persona, but at times they seem whole; they seem to have a mind of their own, and they have things they’d like to say.

Sometimes I think about all the misshapen pears and moths I paint and how I despair over the forms I can’t get right. But maybe my hand with a mind of its own is getting this part right: in each asymmetrical moth wing, or that poorly postured pear, whose twisted shape is the result of growing in uneven sun, we see reflections of ourselves.

Sometimes I write we and I intend it to refer to a collective of individuals reading what I’ve written. I project outward; I imagine everyone else working hard to make sense of the world. Sometimes I write we and I feel as if the crowd in my head is cheering for the recognition. We contain multitudes.

This past weekend, my love and I found ourselves taking a bit of a work-related road trip. The beautiful thing about long drives with someone you love is that you and the multitudes in your head get to have unbroken stretches of time with him and his multitudes. I don’t know if that sounds strange or not, I don’t know how other people see themselves and the people close to them, but for me, opening into this truth of our mutual complexities is at once an act of love and an act of self-love. I cherish times like these, and I am in awe of the way being with him opens up pathways not only to know him better, but to know myself better.

I’ve been thinking about these multitudes a lot lately. Many blogs ago I talked about how I needed to listen to the other stories and voices within me, in terms of my writing. I think all writing is personal, and I think it is impossible to avoid privileging the I within us that synthesizes the multitude of voices clamoring to be heard. This morning I walked the dog after sleeping an unbelievable nine hours. I tried to shake off sluggishness and dream fragments as we trotted through the pale morning, looking for downed branches from yesterday’s windstorm. I was surprised by how few branches the sycamores had dropped. My dog was surprised by the break in our routine – morning walks are not the way we usually do things. My legs were surprised by the sudden brisk and sustained movement. I began to realize that surprise was what some of my recent writing was missing. There are voices in the crowd I haven’t listened much to, voices that long to be heard. And going into the dark winter months with a new perspective on my writing feels good. It is time to listen to the other voices and write new stories.

Maybe that’s what we all need a little bit of at this time of year. A nudge to listen to what is latent and waiting within us, new ways of thinking that have nothing to do with the disciplined focus we’ve sustained on current events. I get lost in my own head a lot. Many people do. Sometimes you have to get out of your head a bit, but sometimes, as long as you’re in there, maybe just wander around a bit. Listen for the quieter thoughts and let them lead you, rather than stomping down the well-worn paths of the usual anxieties. Sometimes it is difficult to feel creative and new in the cold dark months. It is easy to slip into a sort of mental hibernation as we fatigue sooner in the day with the early setting of the sun.

I know that I’m prone to romanticizing. My heart was built this way. But I can’t help thinking of those few hundred miles with my love at my side, and how the simple slipping away of the road beneath us, the cadence of it, underscored the easy rhythm of our interaction. How the surprise of the road trip, a somewhat unexpected turn in our Saturday morning, was something our mutual multitudes seemed to delight in.

In these short dark days, when so many of us fall helplessly into a slow sadness that is not easily eased, I’m pointing myself toward surprise, both in my creative work and in my life. My morning walk today helped propel me from the molasses-y state I woke into, and I know it will take work to keep finding ways to unstick myself as the dark cold months wear on. I’m thankful for whatever voice within me suggested the walk this morning. I’m grateful, too, to be with someone whose multitudes know how to speak to mine; I’m grateful for the surprise and delight of simple things like driving someplace unexpected together.

I feel as though I have an awareness now of what I’m going to need as November unfolds into December and as our Michigan winter extends unceasingly through March. Let us all remind each other of our multitudes, that there are other voices we can listen to besides the ones that speak the loudest to us, the ones that pull us toward our usual blues, our worn out but persistent anxieties. Let’s help each other to look for surprise, and to be delighted by it.

Love, Cath