Living Life, Creating Life
Watching the river amble on its path through a mountain ravine. Feeling the sea spume blowing on my face as the waves crash on the rocky beach beneath my feet. Smelling the salty morning air as I stand on my front porch. My senses are awake to the beauty of the world around me.
I could as easily describe the odor that reeks from the homeless gentleman whose home is on the sidewalk under the bridge near where I live in San Francisco. I do notice that, but I also notice his quiet dignity as I observe him nearly every day. He sits cross-legged on his blanket as he reads intently from the paperback book he holds in his hands while sipping from his Starbuck’s cup as he holds the stub of his hand-rolled cigarette. I have heard him talking quietly to friends on occasion, and late at night as I have been on my way home with my family, I’ve noticed him sleeping in his carefully arranged shelter of tarps and boxes. Nevertheless, mostly what I observe about him is his constancy and intent as he reads daily. Periodically, I stop to chat with him, offer him books and share food with him, but know he needs little from me. While he may long for more, a different life than the one he lives, he possesses a sense of himself that allows him his dignity and beauty.
It has always been important to me to look for the beauty in life…even the beauty amid the pain, the sadness, and the injustices of life. As a mother and grandmother, I have made it a priority to enjoy and observe the beauty of the world in which we live. I have made it a priority to appreciate and pay attention to each moment and each stage of our relationships. To watch how we change as Daughter becomes Mother, and Mother becomes Grand Mother.
As a teacher, I found it necessary and more interesting for my students, to bring the subject matter to life through art, music, imagination, and the connection of time and space to culture and history and me. How much more exciting it was to imagine living in an ancient culture and to better understand that people, just like us, lived lives very similar to us in some ways yet very different in others. To bring to life a distant culture or to connect our lives to the lives of those in our own families who had descended from one of those ancient tribes, was to create a link to students with the life force of whatever I was teaching. To know that music, art, great buildings and events, as well as intricate codes that held language and complex formulas that formed the basics of mathematics had all been born from the spiritual traditions and ancient ideas of our ancestors.
Creating is about connecting one idea to another. My cultural background tells me that everything begins in the imagination. We formulate and shape ideas and creations in our imaginations. Creator Spirit breathes into us the gifts of imagination, sensation, thought, and emotion. When I first studied in University, my friend Mary Lynn and I did some research on creativity. We both had young children at the time, and it was still a time when “reason” was king, so ideas about anything being creative were denigrated. We, on the contrary, felt there was something innately intelligent and practical about creativity and creating.
Over my academic career, I used my studies to focus on creating a life that allowed me to explore, investigate, and create ways to connect, heal, and express beauty—be it in relationships or through whatever I made or developed. I am a writer and a photographer. These two mediums provide me with the means of expressing myself…Through the lens of my camera and the ideas about which I write, I am creating records, capturing moments and freezing time just a bit to stand as a reminder of its passing. I stand with my camera to view the world from my particular place and to share a perspective and vision for others to appreciate what they might have missed. As I write, I leave bits and pieces of poetic rhapsody, of intriguing mystery, of heartening glimpses into cultures, historical moments, and pasts left behind.
For many years, most of my creating happened in and around academia. I recall a dream I had a few years ago…a dream that alerted me to the need for me to move out of that area in order to live a more creative, fulfilling life. Shortly after finishing my thesis on trauma and stress, I dreamed I was re-potting a plant. In the dream, I picked the plant, roots and all, out of the pot and said to someone (my shadow self no doubt), I hate this kind of writing. It has no life to it.” While I had loved the work I had done conducting interviews and exploring the subject matter surrounding the topic, I did not like the way I had to write about the deeply personal, disturbing material I had gathered from the very brave men and women who had shared their stories with me. I wanted their experiences to connect to people who needed to hear about the struggles that people had gone through to live free lives.
It took me a while, but I left academia to begin my full time life as a writer and photographer. I divide my time between my home in Monterey and my daughter’s home in San Francisco where I help my daughter with my Grand Daughter. The struggle to start a new way of living can be a bit scary, but I have found that I now have more to do than I have time to do it. There was a point, a threshold time between moving onto this new way of living or going on as before, when I wasn’t sure…oh and why should I be sure. We never do really know what is ahead. So at crucial points, I continue to make decisions based on what I feel deep in my heart, soul, and gut is my true purpose in life. Not what others think I should be doing, not what worked for me for many years, not for the easy way, but for the truly risky choice to live life authentically doing what I was called here to create.
I am interested in using photography and writing to connect others to the beauty of the natural world and to the world, we have created. I encourage others to connect to their essence, their history, and their actual presence in the world. My desire is to capture the fleeting moments as I live awake and alert to the beauty of images and ideas that may strike me at any time of the day and night, and as a writer and photographer, I am compelled to respond. I believe that I am to create beauty from whatever experiences I have. That is even the mantra I use as I clean house or straighten out files, drawers, or closets. All for the beauty and Divine order of the Universe. Each little step I take, each little moment I capture on film or in writing, each little piece of time I have in relationship, is a gift to me for the life I have been privileged to live creatively.
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