Were You Creative Enough?

This year, fall was short-lived.  By my calculations, winter’s abrupt non-negotiable entrance on November 6 was marked by 35-degree weather and grey skies. Before that day, I thought I would have enough time to hike in Oats Nut Park, Falmouth Preserve, Robinson Woods, and Rachel Carson Nature Walk in Wells. Biking around Peaks Island and visiting the Isabella Gardner museum in Boston were also on my Fall to-do list but low funds didn't allow me to complete all the activities on my list.   


Yet, Fall was marked by a seismic event in my life—the end of my hermit years in Maine. For seven years, I lived mostly in silence, without television, sex, relationships, curtains…  At first, my life-long dream of being left alone to think, do, and be felt unbearable because, unbeknownst to me, I wasn’t ready to accept silence or solitude.   Years of working through neuroses of body issues, sex issues, love issues, parent issues… lightened my load a bit and left me with an appreciation for mental clarity. For the first time ever, I looked at my life in microscopic details-- finances (after paying monthly bills, I should have $125 to spend on myself); vitamins (narrowed them down from 12 supplements a day to 4); hair products (Horse mane shampoo and conditioner do wonders for my hair without the hefty price tag. I also learned to cut and layer my own hair by watching YouTube videos); diet (two cups of almond milk with a scoop of Bob’s Red Mill chocolate protein powder for breakfast, a vegetable smoothie for lunch, and grilled vegetables and chicken or fish for dinner); exercise (six days of week of cycling or weightlifting), writing (starting at 4:00 a.m.)… Of course, it also helped that for the first time in my life, I was sleeping through the night after discovering the wonders of using Magnesium Oil. 


Saying goodbye to my being a hermit was difficult, but the conviction of its ending beat in my heart along with the constant beating on the pavement by construction workers making way for a gentrified Portland now filled with rich, well-dressed White people and a higher cost of living. The farmer who I usually spoke to at the Farmer's Market on Wednesday said that change in Portland was a good thing (his own kids had recently built a luxury campground along the river of his farmlands on Higgins Beach).  “It’s goes one way one day and another the next.” His take on change consoled me, and so did a tarot reading by Heather, Portland’ premier astrologer, who said my dark night of the soul was over.


So, I did a two-hour #Congolese dance workshop and attended a #Mali African Blues concert. I played pickleball at the gym; accepted an invitation to an end of Fall shindig in Limington; and discovered a blooming pink-leaf tree. I also decided to celebrate the holidays early by doing research on the world’s favorite Christmas movies and requesting those movies from the library. So far, I’ve been to Finland with “Rare Exports, to Canada with “Mon Oncle Antoine,” to Hong Kong with “2046,” to France with “Christmas Tale,” to Ireland with “My Mother and Other Strangers,” to Louis, Missouri, with “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and to New York City with “Holiday Affair.” I’m waiting on my request for Danish, Russian, English, and Scottish holidays movies. 


I’ve always inventoried my current life situation or chapter by answering a question that I imagined would be asked of me by the higher-ups in the afterlife. Years ago, the question was, “What Were You Thinking?” based on the cynicism of my childhood, the years I was deemed imperfect and all my actions unfit or incorrect.  Then the question became “What Did You See?” reflecting my awareness of looking at life with a pained perspective and my inability to see the vividness around me. While in Maine my question became “Is Your Heart as Light as a Feather?” an Egyptian myth based on how a feather is used to weigh the soul before entering the gates of heaven; that same question encompassed my struggles with letting go of past hurts, anger, and resentments.  Recently the question became, “Were You Creative Enough?” which I ask myself every day now about the conversations I had, the walk I took, the foods I ate, the things I saw…. By creative, I mean the exercise the shaman has his apprentice practice in Castaneda's, "The Teachings of Don Juan," when the young man is asked to find the perfect spot in the terrace outside, and he spends hours feeling for it; it is my new knowing that all my actions should be inspired by every cell in my body and every cell in the universe. 

From Maine's untamed nature and changing seasons, I've learned that its purpose is to always be surprising, exciting, alive, even when Fall leaves are brown and dry, yet frost lines their veins with sparkles like chipped, tiny, white diamonds.  It is now my new life goal to make the minutiae of my days beat in perfect rhythm with the knowing in my heart.