I spend my days helping students to expand their vocabularies, express thoughts in written and spoken words, and different approaches to thinking about life and themselves. I've become a instant writing prompt generator, assistant problem-solver, and intuitive suggester of ideas. What I realize now, is that I've always been those things and focused on addressing the success of others over the creative success of myself. Now it's time to use my strengths for my own goals.
Especially in the intuitive arena. Being a teacher, you have to tune in to your students. Being an agent one must tune in to your writers; and by extension society. An agent is a professional gambler who is betting on knowing the tastes, trends and tenor of a culture 1-5 years from the time they take on an author. Being a mother, you must tune and return in to your children from conception to infinity.
As a child I had a gift. Not as a writing prodigy, no. Nor a well honed, hours of practice and diligence craft. I came to writing late, as my parents, in one of the last acts of their marriage, started an alternative school. It didn't include teaching the youngest, as most were teenagers, how to read and write. I begged to go to public school, they finally relented, and I learned late how to do both.
No, my gift was rather an unsettling talent for knowing things in advance of them actually happening. Primarily things came to me in dreams ,while I was asleep, and could happen as soon as the next day, or as far off as six months to a year later.
When I was very young they could also happen in real time. It scared my parents and other adults. Knowing who was calling on the phone, that my father was bringing me a surprise gift, what it was, and using the word for it that I could barely pronounce, yet some how knew. I could mimic voices very well, too. Another form of connectivity, I guess.
Once I learned to write, I'd write down the dreams in my journal. Sometimes I didn't if they were unpleasant or scary; someone getting injured or people fighting or dramatic appearances from unknown sources. Occasionally they'd wake me up in the middle of the night. I knew that whatever I'd just witnessed was inevitable, sometimes with names or images I'd never seen before, but knew I would.
In High School I started to turn off the waking dream side of things, as it became too much. I saw one of my best friends become injured in a skiing accident with her boyfriend. I begged them not to go away on their ski trip, but they ignored my foolish premonitions. Later that week, Carolyn would call me, shaken. She had, at the last minute, not taken the final run of the day, but Paul did. Paul had to be lifted off the mountain and was in surgery for his leg.
I told whatever gate was open to that source of information to close, as it took too big a toll on me physically and emotionally. It did during my waking hours, except when those closest to me where/are going through seismic shifts or places I know intimately. Then the gate always opens. The last time it opened, I saw my sisters appendix cancer and didn't know what it was; orange, gelatinous and throughout the cavity of her torso. Cold sweats and scary phone calls followed.
Creativity is another source of connectivity that I've always been able to access, however not always been confident to share. Music, art, dance and design have always intrigued me and been natural languages to me. Writing has been a passion. These creative languages help me to connect to my students, children and people with whom I don't share a spoken language.
Which leads me to another odd set of talents. I can go to a foreign country, not speak the language or ever have been to the city/town/village before and get along. I'll understand people and find my way.
Not like an idiot savant, mind you, but like a respectful, observant and compassionate human. It's an odd gift, but I treasure it. I believe I've been to 28 +- countries and always felt at home...
Odd, I know. Yet, not, too. It's who I am. It sounds like swagger or bravado, but it's not. I embrace new experiences, maybe because I've had to from a young age? It's served me well. Maybe because experiences I haven't lived, but know will happen, come to me since as long as I can remember words and images? It's prepared me for imagining my life as a series of vignettes or a tryptic that needs to be framed now that I'm turning my odd gift on myself?
With it being a few hours away from a new spring, for some a new year (Iran, last week or this week?), I find that I'm diving fearlessly into my own wellspring of creativity. One that I've been told for most of my life is unusual. Yet it is the only life I know, which makes it seem organic, natural and obvious to me. My own kids and students say they want to read stories of my life . What remains are still two unanswered questions; from when to when and what question does it need to answer to be of use?
This summer I've committed to diving deep into myself, and preparing pieces to workshop. This spring I'm still cleaning out the cobwebs of my mind and airing out the chasms of my life so far.
Good Night, to creative wellsprings and Spring itself, G'night!
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