CREATIVE NATURE
I know someone who has an inspirational philosophy. They decide how they want to live their life each day and if the thoughts had or the momentum of life that rushes over them, fits their design… they keep it; if it does not, it is rejected.
I started out the week thinking about this powerful credo as being ultimately simple and surprisingly omnipotent. But, then Monday came and I needed a strong Starbucks coffee.
As I arrived at the caffeine dispensary, I thought how my life is different than most. For me it is more like this mushroom, poof, I wake up, and there I am. I didn’t mean to be a mushroom shaped like that, but there it is. During a resting squat, some early morning black bird, perched on a young tree, was tweeting its ass off. This feathery messenger involuntarily poops-out some mysterious green and white goo, that lands in the dewy grass near a heat conducting concrete curb, across the parking lot from my 24 hour Starbucks. And some random time later a mushroom pops up… that may or may not resemble the birds butt it was born from.
A very different perspective than, “I create and control, what I will see think and feel.” Such a commanding simple bit of brilliance. Does it block out unexpected gifts as well as unexpected threats? Or is it a whole different kind of creativity?
Maybe there was a whole flock of birds in that tree above that spot rather than one prolific bird that caused all these mushrooms to grow. Never the less, there they were waiting for me to photograph. Strange shaped random goodies, each influencing the shape of the other. Each growing to the capacity of the restrictions around them, that caused them to take shape in the design of the path of least resistance. Doubtful if they woke up determining the shape they would be.
My week started out with a call from the local market. “Your peanut butter has arrived!” No, it wasn’t a call from my stock broker to congratulate me on a windfall or from my mechanic to tell me my Mercedes is ready. The rare and elusive Mighty Maple was special ordered for me from the Fresh Market.
The rest of my Monday was made up of planning out the week to come, right after discovering those mushrooms.
I think about the smartest people in the world and how they extrapolate. Like how they might deduce that when a person does one dumb thing, that everything that one person must do is dumb. It makes me wonder how wise it is to extrapolate about the ever learning condition of people or nature. Could these brilliant short cutters predict by some statistical calculation, the configuration of these mushroom clusters, by the height of the tree, the direction of the wind and the weight and shape of the spores or the ornithological opening from which they shot out of? Would they have been able to anticipate that the mushrooms would blossom to form the shape of a happy smiley face with side tilted hat, accompanied by two cartoon thought bubbles? Doubtful I think.
A wandering nonsensical mind will see the smiley face. A strapped down grounded intellect will just see mushrooms. Does that make the highly creative blind to the obvious or the strait shooter unable to deviate and explore? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s a battle of wits and other times it’s a gracious admiration of different talents.
I was drawn to this tree for it’s beautiful soft sweeping moss. The kind of tree that begs to have a hammock hung from it, cradling a rocking person sipping a mint julep and slowly swinging back and forth till they drift off to sleep.
However, when this same sleepy tree is seen another way, it could be rocketing up to the sky at such a velocity that it leaves speed trails of mossy green in its wake.
Is it a blind miss of the obvious or the crucial made unimportant? A waste of mental energy perhaps, on something insignificant and irrelevant? Is it the gush of an undisciplined wandering brain, rationalizing an inability to focus on the pertinent? Is it the brilliant insight of a creative mind? A unique perspective? Or just the random droppings out a birds ass mushrooming into an unpredictable existence?
Barry Stein's Blog 
Beautiful, poetic…should be a mass produced series of Novels starting with this perfect sentence; “During a resting squat, some early morning black bird, perched on a young tree, was tweeting its ass off.”
Starbucks will forever be in my psyche as the caffeine dispensary. And mushrooms peaking out of the ground always looked like little blobs of bird poo so I’m with you on that one.
A fantastic way to explain creativity. We are creative because it is in us and we must express it.