Wandering in Creativity

This was originally an article that I wrote back in Spring of ’99 that I found converting my files from 3½ floppy to flash drive. I thought about making corrections to it but decided to leave it well enough alone. These were my thoughts a little more than ten years ago at the age of sixteen.

I have always been a wandering spirit. Though when needed be, I've always focus on what needed to be done: Things like walking to the grocery store and getting the groceries to getting my assignments done. Each and everything I do I try to learn something new along the way. If not, reiterated lessons I have long forgotten to put in practice.
What I have learned from this wandering spirit is although creativity is a free-floater; the two doesn't always mean one in the same. When you learn that the two doesn't necessarily intertwine, inner conflict brews until it can no longer be contained like steam in a teapot eventually evaporating into the surroundings.
Antonneah asks playfully, looking over at the pen in my hand overcastting the napkin on the table. "What are you working on Mr. Hutchinson?"
Not interested in the assignment I suppose to be doing or working on the novel I suppose to have the first draft completed two weeks ago, I answer "nothing." When in truth, I find myself doodling a poem on the napkin at Taco Bell.
I'm embarrassed.
I've found even more things to describe this lovely girl's beauty. In the course of two months, today was the day she chose to go with me to Taco Bell. Now that she sits in front of me, all I want her to do now is get out of sight so I can write a poem about her beauty, inside and out. Redundant, I know. Antonneah was never my girlfriend (although I wanted her to be); she was a girl that was a friend that I cared for a great deal. And for me to care for another soul when I didn't care about myself was quite a scare to my tortured being.
"Another poem?"
I nod, sipping on my drink and eating on my Big Beef Meximelt.
Although I was known as a writer to most in my class, I was most noted for being a poet. Which was ironic because I never let many people read my work. I never feared anyone not liking my writings. My biggest fear was others taking credit for it. In the sense that someone would say that it was their poem (because it describes their feeling(s) or it sounded similar to another's work) or they thought they were the inspiration for the poem. Even though many of my teen works were abstract, in my opinion.
She asks, "How does that come to you?"
With a poked mouth, I finished chewing and washed it down with a good gulp of Hawaiian Punch.
I answer with a question, "Writing?"
She nodded, laughing. There was always something about my facial expression that always made her laugh. Apart of my creativity were a smile and the unspoken words I said. I continued to poke food in my mouth wanting to think about how I wanted to answer her question. Coming off the top of my head I knew I would stutter like hell. My main goal at the time was to get to know her on a more intimate level; or try to somewhat impress her.
Understand we were fifteen or sixteen at the time.
"Sometimes it comes to me like a bolt of lightening. Everything that I want to say and how I want you to hear it comes together and makes sense on a piece of paper."
What I didn't say to her was that my wandering spirits do, so my creative spirit can pursue. That is doing as they feel. But since I didn't want that to be open for loose interpretation, I closed my mouth.
I called myself a wandering spirit because physically I've always wandered. In my youth, I bounced from place to place. So, eventually, I began to get a taste to explore things outside of my usual realm. (Something that had really started when my mother left my father for the first time.)
After moving ever so often, I became numb to stability because anything and everything were up for change at any moment. I was numb until I began to wander within myself. Wandering to places that I have only heard about, read about. Wandering to simplicity; complexity; and enlightenment. Wandering to the feelings I felt denied to express. Those feelings that were so bottled up within me that they came out in lashes of reality. Never a supportive balance.
In my exploration in yonder, I found creativity. I found those things I was without sensibly in creativity alternating what was for what could be or could have been. It was this I thought my wandering spirit and creative spirit was kindred spirits. For many, and for myself, it would be safe to assume that they were one in the same. It was through my wandering spirit that I was able to find my right brain's creative spirit. A spirit that may have been already there, but wasn't expose until my wandering spirit drifted me from reality.
For many years I enjoyed having a wandering spirit. When thing got too heavy at home or other places: Tap, tap, tap! I could tap into my wandering spirit—a spirit of trance—until that part of me found some creative spirits within me. Usually, and not consciously trying, I would find my creative flow. When it came to poetry, most was abstract to other while clear as a crystal bell to deep-minded. Other writings came out the could've, would've, should've, of a situation mixing the realism of my life with the various imageries of my mind, my spirits.
It was cool in the beginning being able to express myself on paper than I ever could verbally. It was through my wandering spirit to my creative spirit that I could say just about anything and everything I wanted without repercussions. (Later, I would learn all words have repercussions.) It was in my wandering and creative spirit that I was able to trust. There was no certainty in wandering nor was there any certainty in creativity, but there was a trust. Hard to explain…No‚ it's not. Creativity and the wandering path had no reason to cause me harm.
Boy, was I wrong.
Because a wandering spirit is wandering there are never any grassroots planted in the ground. And you cannot get anywhere halfway off the ground. I under the assumption that my wandering spirit was taking me everywhere only to learn I wasn't going anywhere. I was seeing everything; the possibilities. Yet what I wasn't seeing was the reality of not going anywhere.
Originally, my magnificent creative spirit took me up to Cloud 9 where I slowly ascended from there. After time I could reach that creative peek without any prior thought. When I did, I was being lifted so high and so quick to my creativity, when I reached my level I was bless to stay there for awhile before I was slapped to the ground by reality.
What I had to cope with was a wandering spirit needing to be anchored. And when I say 'anchored' I don't mean weighed. I speak of my wandering soul not being halfway off the ground like it had been. Instead, being firmly planted on the ground with a sense of direction. And understanding that path within "direction" isn't as concrete as we think. Can be changed if willing to risk. Then, we are grounded in the sense of finding an anchorage, or stability.
I had a creative spirit that would take me up and let me down like the reality I was force to face. That up and down; over here, over there; no stability. I had to make creativity, or the spirit of creativity a stability. Holding on when it took me up. Holding on when it tried to cut me loose. (Hold on for dear life, don't let go. And if you do, land on the trampoline, grab on and don't ever let go).
Then, there was the father behind my two spirits. Reality. REALITY. A reality I was so destined not to face that it gave me this wandering spirit. It was already equipped with creativity. From reality's creativity gave me my wandering spirit. Why? Because I had to face the good and the bad of reality. A task that I wasn't able to face at the time. My wandering spirit showed me the potential of everything while floating in one place. It [reality] knew that my wandering spirit would eventually show me to reality, but not before facing creativity.
Through the eyes of reality, the wandering spirit—the ability to go anywhere without going anywhere—gave me insight through my creative spirit to write. Anyone will tell you that beautiful things, realistic stories, were written from this creative spirit. Apart of me that I would have never been able to find through the basis of reality. This is where I steam in the teapot started to blow.
All the while I thought in order to get to my creative spirit, I had to go from my reality through my wandering spirit to get to my creativity. Being that wandering part of me had to wander, and my creative side had to base itself off of this wandering spirit. I was quick to believe my wandering spirit and creative spirit of them being one in the same. Where I come to learn they weren't one in the same was when reality broken them up.
By way of a self-induced depression.
When my wandering spirit showed me most of everything, and not taking me anywhere. I fell apart. Why? Because I was once able to see everything, the possibilities, and I couldn't anymore except for what I had seen repeatedly. I was immobile with myself, not able to explore my possibilities because this wandering spirit encaged me. A spirit that could look out, but I couldn't go out of the very cage that I thought reality had cast me.
My wandering spirit left reality. Rather it asked of me to leave the pain of my reality behind. It raised me, halfway off the ground to see other horizons and possibilities. I couldn't do that anymore. Yet I was able to hold onto creativity. Again, why? Creativity never asked me to leave reality. Instead, it [creativity] asked of me to turn my reality into something creative. Making it so that it carries some of the joys the pains without suffocating who I was. And it was my creativity that reminded me that in every step taken you will always come back to one. Reality to wandering to creativity and back. Whether I went from creativity to reality, or me having to go from my creativity through my wandering spirit back to my reality, I always went back to one.
I always thought that I needed my wandering spirit to be creative. I come to learn, that yes, I needed my wandering spirit to show me my creativity. It was a lesson that my reality had to show me. But the intent wasn't for me to be fixated on that wandering spirit to achieve creativity. I've come to believe that it was through that wandering spirit that I was to see reality through the eyes of creativity. Reality and creativity were parallel lines. That wandering spirit was that line that connected the two. Exposing me of the two similar, but different realms of reality and creativity that I was unable to see shortsightedly.
"Are you done?" Antonneah asks, as I take the last bit out of my Big Beef Meximelt and the last sip of my Hawaii Punch.
"Sure. Whenever you are ready to go."
It was then that maybe my creativity doesn't come from my reality. It could be it comes from staying up all night from eating spicy foods.
Nah, it's the perception of reality.