One of the most fun books I have read recently is Melanie Rothschild’s THE ART OF MISTAKES:  Unexpected Painting Techniques and the Practice of Creative Thinking.

In it she makes a most insightful comment:   “Creativity is not just about art.  Sometimes it has nothing at all to do with art.  Creativity is about how we think, the possibilities we allow into our thinking and our ability to follow through with action.  In just about anything we do, we can think creatively or not.”

And that IS the thing, you know.  Even something as mundane as making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can be a creative endeavor…or not.

One of the best aids to creativity, I find, is hanging with other people who think playing around with possibilities is fun and who actually work at trying to make something out of nothing as a matter of course.  The more people you have around you who are busy living ordinary lives in extraordinary ways, the more likely it is that you will be inclined to do it too.  There is nothing quite like being surrounded by other Makers.

The video that follows is a marvelous example of the possibilities that can become real when people play with possibilities.  It’s about what happened when people who live in a slum built on a garbage heap decided to give their children music….

And here’s another poem….

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WE GO

You ask.

I answer.

I do not know much…

almost nothing at all.

 

But, I walk the same road you tread.

I’ve gone down in flames

and struggled up again.

It continues…the story does not end with you or me.

 

Here I stand.

no longer whole,

bent in odd ways,

no longer shining quite so brightly. 

 

It doesn’t matter, you know

IT. DOES. NOT. MATTER.

The game goes on –

the game of light and shadow.

 

And we are the ones who can choose

to find the balance

in the roiling chaos

that makes and remakes this World of Dust.

 

We are the favored children of the Universe,

and in our dream and our stories,

in our Making and un-Making,

it is we who dare to dance between Heaven and Earth.

 

We are the ones who challenge

and we the ones who go down in defeat.

It is we who rise up again…

and again…and again…

until we no longer can.

 

And somewhere in all of that,

some of us get to fly,

some of us touch the stars.

 

Shoots!  We go….

By Netta Kanoho

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picture credit:  Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich (with ketchup as jelly) by Elizabeth Lloyd via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

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SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• HOW TO MESS AROUND
• TRY SOMETHING ELSE
• WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

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Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you’d drop a comment or note below.