1.
It has taken me many years to accept that I am organized and detail oriented. In 3rd grade, my teacher gave me a sticker that said: Creative Minds Are Seldom Tidy. It was meant to be an encouragement, I think, because I appeared to be a disorganized child, but my mind twisted it so that I was convinced that my mind, if tidy, could not create. Ergo, I have fought any instinct to be orderly because I don’t want to sacrifice my creativity.
2.
A disclaimer against the preceding paragraph for anyone who knows me: clutter in the mind and clutter about the person are two very different things. I have never kept an immaculate household; dust bunnies reign as they would in a quiet western town where the dust bunnies can only be eradicated by the white-hatted stranger and he just hasn’t arrived yet. But dust only irritates me when I can see it, which is a few times a day when the sun shines just right through the window of the apartment. With a bit of luck, this meeting of dust and light can happen when I am elsewhere or otherwise occupied. I would much rather stuff my face with food than clean up after it, I hate toilets and their attendant muck, I get no thrill from champagne, etc.
No, but really, I know people who like to clean. I am not one of those people.
My mind, though, is a properly filed cabinet, with well-oiled drawers. Things are labelled properly in my mind. When my mind gets too cluttered, I write things out and when I see them on paper, in an organized format, with stars for bullets or maybe just little dashes, I feel calmer, as though I have taken control of things.
3.
Of course, the key is balance.
4.
I have shown a tendency to over-stimulate my creative side. For years, my notebooks were full, bulging, surly with creativity. Nothing ever made it out of the notebooks, onto the desk of a publisher or even a friend, but those notebooks were plein, as they say in Frahnce. I had poetry that kept oozing out of me, even when I covered all my orifices with plastic and tinfoil. It seems, of late, that I have tilted too far towards a different windmill. My life is so well structured I could probably network with the right person to arrange for the publication of the poetry. I have and use a daily calendar and I just used the word “network” in a sentence. But I like this about myself, I like my ability to be not what I seem; it only scares me when I look at the organizational side of me within the framework of the biting, snarling, raging poet side of me, who forgets what time it is or where she is supposed to be. It scares me when I know not where what I seem and what I am part ways. A friend said to me a couple of years ago: Don’t arrange the writing around your life, arrange your life around the writing. When I go creative I forget the world. When I’m in the world I can’t let my guard down to be creative.
A week ago I was talking to a friend who is dating someone she describes as an only child-oldest child mixture. In other words, he is responsible and serious, with a well-concealed wacky side. I am an only child. I think I have become quite proficient at not hiding my wacky side and at knowing when to ditch the seriousness. But that damn Responsibility gets me where it hurts! I realized that I take my own responsibility far too seriously, not to mention everyone else’s. If I screw up, the world may crumble. No, it might! Mark my words. This may be where my creative/organizational spectrum becomes less rainbow-like and more mud-shit-brown-like.
5.
I would like to shift my gift a little, move myself over to the less-green, more fragrant side, do something about the slump of my shoulders, burn the bad poetry, know that what was created can be re-created.
What with the pink nail polish, Q tips and new sandals, I’ll probably be too busy to post for a while. To sustain you, here’s a photo of what it looks like when I do post.
and my new shoes:
