this old abandoned gas station sits on a corner in my town that i drive by almost daily. a few weeks ago some lovely soul sketched a summer meadow that transformed it from outdated utility into a thing of beauty.
each time i drive by, i am filled with an intensie desire to add color to the black and white canvas. in my mind's eye, i can see myself with paintbrush in hand, like a happy child with a giant coloring book.
lately i find myself paying attention to these flashes of fantasy firing in my head. throughout my life i have been taught to ignore them and consider them something to keep secret. this can be somewhat shame-producing for me, because, you see, i have these kinds of thoughts all the freakin' time.
take for example, the letters. i have a pretty big collection of them. some of them form words on my walls; some of them are stacked in a room downstairs, waiting for assignment. during the time i was hanging "beautiful" on the wall, i dreamed that when we are born, we each bring with us a big letter. throughout our lives, we migrate toward and away from others with whom we form a variety of words, depending on where we each are in our own books. the others with their own letters are our family, friends, allies, antagonists. human interaction becomes a giant choreographed dance of language and symbolism and poetry. the imagery was so beautiful. since the dream, i often wonder what words are forming between the connections i float through in real life. it has become a sort of mental game i play...just one more vivid mind film playing concurrently with the one of the flowerbomb exploding from the average fountain and the one where the sweet fat pink cartoon elephant in the room is whispering secrets in my ear during a conversation.
i understand that this kind of overactive imagination has to be contained in order to function in the world. i've been sufficiently trained to run the stories like a foreign film playing in the background of a party that no one is paying attention to. but i often wonder what lush garden would have bloomed if a parent or friend or teacher said, "tell me more...", "write it down...", "color me a picture of what that looks like...". i imagine the person who envisioned a garden on a gas station. was he encouraged to create? or did she just go on ahead and paint in spite of doubt and fear?
the other day a friend and i were discussing things we love about being in our forties. i shared that the biggest thing for me is how infrequently i feel that cringe-worthy embarrassment that plagued me in youth. i realized that i may actually be becoming comfortable and happy with who i am and (dare i say?) proud of my vision of the world we live in.
i like my vision, my version, of this colorful magical life.
{p.p.s. thoughts bloomed from today's creativity boot camp promt, ornament.}
