A Wellspring of Imagination

On days like this, where the wind is howling, a late spring snowstorm is sweeping across the state, and a mug of coffee in my hand, this is when I have a wellspring of ideas. In this setting, the birds have risen early and are all scattering about getting caught up in a wind gust, the sun is refusing to come out and play and school buses are plowing through the snow-covered roads filled with children wishing they could have just stayed safe at home.


It’s mornings like this when I look out the window and see the trees come alive, eerily walking in the cornfields only to realize it is the wind sweeping branches across the field and the crane hiding within them for a brief break from the gusting winds.

It is at this time my imagination is full of ideas wandering into a different realm that normal man and women dare not go. But writer’s, we’re of a different caliber; we see a story in every waking moment. Upon every tragedy that faces the nation we climb into our imagination box and create a story. Hiding within every triumph and selfless attitude that shake the people’s psyche to the core, a story is born.

Inspiration is the doorway to the Wellspring of Imagination. While normal (or not so normal) folk gripe and grumble of each aspect of their lives that bother them, the writer instead digs in and finds a story to tell. While journalist go out and seek a story to give to the people, the writer need only to open his eyes at sunrise and see a story unfold right out there window of inspiration.

As a writer, you know full well that the story is right there, tumbleweeds roll, thunder claps, lightning blazes across the sky, houses topple, trees sway, the music is words that have come alive in your imagination which sends you to the keyboard, tapping out a tale for readers to catch a glimpse of in the quiet of their day.

As you, the writer, are filled with inspiration from the previous days events, the glorious sunrise that puts shadows across the fields, the chaos communities endure places you smack in the middle with a story to unfold. You are going to write a fictional story or non-fiction that sheds a new light in the wells of darkness sweeping the earth.

You writer, have the Wellspring of Imagination right at your fingertips waiting to be expelled. There is no need for you to be dismayed because you can express what you imagine other people are feeling at the moment. The wellspring of imagination opens up to you just as a new day dawns each and every morn.

On April 18th, 2013, the snow blowing in has caused me to be inspired in ways you cannot imagine. It has awoken in me the need to write, relay the anxiety people are feeling with such  storms in supposed Spring. This is the season where trees burst forth seed, plants come alive; life, as we know it takes on new meaning. This is the season earth has taken on new tragedies, new eruptions of turmoil. This my friends, is the Season of the Writer!

Quotation Saturday

SUMMER

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.
~Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit


What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
~Gertrude Jekyll


In June, as many as a dozen species may burst their buds on a single day. No man can heed all of these anniversaries; no man can ignore all of them.
~Aldo Leopold


Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
~John Lubbock


Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.
~Ada Louise Huxtable

IMAGINATION

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
~Theodore Geisel


The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595


The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.
~Frank Barron, Think, November-December 1962


Imagination and fiction make up more than three-quarters of our real life.
~Simone Weil

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
~Albert Einstein

SIMPLICITY

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. ~E.F. Schumacher


Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
~Confucius


Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.
~Elise Boulding


Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.
~Robert Brault

Tis the month of June, where blossoms bloom and all is right, the world’s in tune!
~ Joni Zipp

Quotation Saturday

The three ‘I’s and a spare...

IMAGINATION

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. 

~Michelangelo

The Possible's slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination.
~Emily Dickinson

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. 

~Mark Twain

Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy, the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence. 

~Norman Podhoretz


INTEGRITY
 

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day. 

~Abraham Lincoln

Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness. 

~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. 

~J.C. Watts

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha

INTUITION
Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out. ~Michael Burke

Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness. 

~John Sterling
 

Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. 

~Florence Scovel Shinn

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason. 

~Stanley Baldwin

 

The INTERNET...
 

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. 

~Andrew Brown

F2K Begins

Jer. 4: 19 My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war;
***

The doors have been opened, the students unleashed onto the halls where they will run and scurry about looking for their homeroom. We’ll aim them in the right direction, but within weeks they’ll want to change rooms, which isn’t allowed.

The people will learn some simple basics in writing, then they’ll carry this course with them in all of their writing and maybe even come back again just for more fun.

This is my favorite part of the year. I get to guide and teach people new things, inspire them to do their best, and make friendships along the way. Sometimes my life gets stirred into an upheaval where I need this f2k to keep me right here on the ground where I belong.

I’m referring to my daily routine and the people who come into my life for God knows what reason, they use, abuse, slaughter and beat me down until I no longer recognize the real me. Oh, not in the physical sense, mind you, in the psychological sense where they feel empowered and I’m left standing in the rain, with my hair stretched out along my face.

The one thing I do have, is the knowledge of being aware that the psychological warfare is happening. Maybe these folk think they have the upper hand in their deceptive ploys, but I’m aware, lucid, knowledgeable and I go on my days as if nothing different has happened to change my life or way of thinking. Hey, if they can fake it, so can I.

F2K will bring some kind of presence into my life, just like WVU does. It will carry me away to the land of imagination, fun and fancy free. I’ll toss off the walls I’ve built up, let my hair down, run through the fields barefoot and let loose on my writing. This is what keeps me sane in an insane society.

Don’t get me wrong here people. What I’m trying to say is that writing is a portal for me, a place of escape where the mundane becomes a playing field. Battles are fought and I can win. It makes me feel good that the Lord gave me the gift of writing to unleash my insanity and release it to the unknowing world.

If you see me saying WOOHOO, know there is a pained smile behind it. If I make you laugh, know that laughter is cold in my heart. If I inspire you and make you feel good, know when I look in the mirror, my reflection is gone. When I ramble on and on about who knows what,  please know...I’m writing on the white board of  my mind.

Always the first in line and the last to know.

Psalm 73:16 When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;