The Field ("stories" or "infinity")

Last week, when my sister was out of town, I was looking after her two cats for a few days. Because it was rainy, I took a taxi there (I don't have a driver's licence or car - another story of my failings but I'm not telling that now). On day two, as I got out the money to pay the driver, there was a tiny slip of paper in between. What was on the slip of paper was the following quote by William Blake:

“Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.”

So, being me (i.e. a little weird) I gave the taxi driver the piece of paper with the quote along with his money.

On the way back the sun was out, so I decided to walk. My sister stays just on the edge of that large empty piece of field that still contains a few of the remnants of streets and foundations that had been District Six in the 1960s. It's empty now. Drug dealers and copper wires thieves hide their wares there. At one time there were a few shacks, but the truth is, the authorities had forgotten who (which department or whatever) owned this piece of field so it just lay there...

As I walked this length, my inner muse said Go on, throw it. I knew instantly what he referred to. In my bag, I've got an old A4 sized diary in which I write my story ideas.

Every page, till the middle of March was filled, some with several different ideas on the same page... my creative wealth, it seems (although, to be honest, I've accepted that at least half of it will probably never get written)... now my mischievous muse was challenging me to throw it into the field, for the pages to scatter and be lost... I felt a mix of panic and longing... because part of me did see the attraction of clearing the slate, starting again... being empty... Then he said, I couldn't do it either. But he didn't need to say it for me to know one day, I will toss the book... when my bones no longer has the capacity to house my soul and my spirit would rise and the pages would scatter like seagulls... off to seek other horizons..

Later that day, my muse said... I could have given you twenty new stories if you did throw the book... now I can only give you ten...

And today... I was drifting into a dream, an imagining, surprised by what I 'saw' with other eyes and going cool I wanna put that into a story. I yanked myself back to the here and now to write it down.. and part of me realized that, my 'being a writer' was sometimes a little counter productive to the other needs of my soul. This impulse to go hey, that would make a good story sometimes slashed like a whip through my stream of consciousness, halting it...disturbing it... where perhaps it should not have halted...

Being a writer is wonderful, but am i really putting my imagination to the best use, by just mining it for ideas? By snatching the very first flowers along the path home and going heh-heh, got them, when perhaps instead I should be travelling further along those paths... perhaps this compulsion to take 'field notes' of every momentary dream is really an interrupt. Infinity is out there. I don't need to stuff it all in a chest until it loses its shine... it will be there till the end of me...

How Imagination Works

I believe we are all born with a wonderful application that expands the working of the human mind to take on the role of entertainment theatre, tutor, detective, psychic, creator and occasionally torturer. It is called the imagination. Some people claim that they don't have any, but I strongly suspect that (often through no fault of their own) it just got disabled. It can have multiple functions, but for the moment I will list what I consider to be the four most prominent ones.

 1. Open a frequency - incoming signal expected. Most artists, writers and musicians have experienced those moments when you are in the zone. When you sit in front of a keyboard to write a few sentences and end up looking at pages that just seemed to flow like water. When you appear to function as little more than a channel for something that blows you out of the water... This is when the imagination functions in its purest form, as a blank canvas, receptive to the unchecked flow of inspiration, where-ever it comes from, whichever spirit guided it.  

2. Start from scratch creation. This is when you have an idea, but for some reason, you want to spend a little time playing with it, as if it were modeling clay and you are in the mood to potter around a little.. You let it germinate, sprout a few roots and side branches.. experiment with the possibilities, do a test run, make a few adjustments along the way, until it comes together smoothly. This function is no less than the previous one - it just incorporates other elements. In the case #1, the idea probably chose you as a vehicle to set it on its path towards fulfilment. In the case of #2, you chose the idea, as a vehicle for learning and perfecting your craft, be it writing, art or music.

 3. Color the template. The first two functions were those of highly creative people, whose imagination will be fully enabled, but function #3 can be available to persons who will probably never write a book or produce a work of art. Do you read? Have you ever sat down with a book and halfway down the page you can sort of visualize this character or the setting he/she is in? Although you did not write the story, your imagination somehow got switched on by the writer's genius and while he/she gave you an outline, your mind is coloring it in, a bit like when you were a kid with your box of crayons. Music, art, games - various forms of art have the ability to draw you in to the point where you become a co-creator of a reality someone else created. Ever listened to a song and have this private movie running in your head? It's the same principle.  

4 Fix the chinese puzzle. In this case, you also get a template, but it is incomplete or there is something wrong with it. You have to figure out somehow how it should have been put together to make it work the way it is supposed to. This function is the detective, the trouble-shooter, the engineer. It can be used in combination with start from scratch creation, if you run into trouble, or it can be applied to an object or a situation that has been tampered with in some way. In all honesty, it can be the most difficult of the functions to succeed with. (t.y.m. - thank you to my inner muse for helping me work this one out)

Sitting on a Wall (Playing with Meditation Part One)

Wanna participate in a quick work-out for your imagination? Here goes: Picture yourself sitting on a wall. Okay, it's uncomfortable, but as a kid, you never noticed this, because from such a unique vantage point, you could see for miles and miles around. Now go back to being that eager little person who didn't mind sacrificing a bit of discomfort to gain an awe-inspriting new viewpoint... go back to the times when the state of your clothing (or what you wore) was someone else's worry. Sit there, feel the warm sun-drenched stones under your rear end, your legs swinging free, one on each side of the barrier and open your mind's eye real wide.

So what's on the left side of the wall? Green pastures, with farm animals grazing peacefully, or a beach party at sunset with the music blaring and lots of beautiful eye candy, parading their sexy grooves for your benefit. Hey, it could be a concert or a fireworks display. Just keep watching inside and let your mind surprise you. The longer you keep at it, the easier it gets. After all, your mind needed no lessons in learning how to dream at night. When you were young, it was very easy to turn a living room chair into a pony, so why did you stop staging your wishes within the arena of your eternally watchful soul?

Right side of the wall? Let me tell you what I found when I did this. A train station. Yes! And there was a train about to leave, and where it was heading.... I'll leave that one up to you. Trains go anywhere, when your thoughts lay down the tracks - over the ocean, through mountains, through the fiery and fearsome center of the earth. Once you teach your mind to travel, there are no limitations in where you can go.

Hope you indulged in a few moments of dreamy fun and feel invigorated by something too real to dismiss, something that happened nowhere except in the sanctuary of your own mind, and who's to say it didn't happen...

With a nod and a bow to my imaginary friend and accomplice.... (t.y.m.)