Journaling that Sticky Thing

It’s inevitable.  I get this great theme for next year, and I can’t get it out of my mind.  It’s like a song you keep re-playing.  It niggles at you all the time.  I even woke up this morning thinking about cracks and light.  I was thinking about learning to glow from the inside to the outside.  I think to myself, “It could happen. (maybe).”  And how if I really want this to happen, I need to sort some things out, things which clutter up the cracks in me and make it hard for the light to pass through.  I got up and dressed and started to make my morning cup of coffee, my thoughts still niggling about cracks, light, glow.  So while I waited for the coffee to brew, I casually opened up the refrigerator.  I checked for any food items which are probably not good for the promotion of glow.  To my surprise, there were largely healthy things.  I guess I’m on the path toward clearing that crack already.

For me, at this pre-mature point, the metaphor is as much about light as it is about cracks.  As the poem says, “It’s how the light gets in,” or out.  The crack is the space where the action is.  I’ve always believed that the most interesting, exciting, creative things dwell in the place where two different areas border on each other.  Robert Frost nailed it when he wrote, “Something there is which doesn’t love a wall,” and nature causes the wall to keep falling down, i.e., causing the cracks to occur between the two properties (and neighbors), so that they need to meet and interact, even if only for once a year.  Thus, they learn about each other, and they become “good” neighbors.  It’s true in chemistry, physics, art, families, communities, and nations.  I say, welcome the cracks, even in our characters, because that’s where the light, the glow of enlightenment, the chance for wisdom, passes through, both in and out.

For me, this is like the effect of the Creative Journaling project:  Step #1, “First Insight” in action – as it’s happening.  That Right Brain flashed something to me.  It fits in-between, in the space between two apparently disparate areas and provides a sudden flash of understanding.  It will be really exciting to see how this theme of Cracks unfolds.  So what seems creatively logical now?

In the Creative Process, step #2 is “Saturation” – data gathering, a Left Brain activity, so in the interim before the next year, clearly I need to do some research.

Some Words of Encouragement:

·        Look up some words which mean “crack” and “light.”  It’s a place to start. [CR advice to encourage me!]

·        Be alert to those flashes of insight.  They have value beyond words [CR]