This is actually a really hard post to even articulate into words, but I will try.
Elizabeth Gilbert first came into my life all the way back in 2010. A little book club in Central Illinois called the Page Turner's picked a book called 'Eat, Pray, Love' to read for their August meeting. I LOVED the book. That book means so much more to me than words on pages, after I read that book I feel like it changed the way I look at myself as participant in the universe.
Fast forward five years. I now live in Arizona, and part of living in a sprawling metropolis is authors make stops here to talk about their new books, and I'm literally 10 minutes away!
Today the author in town was Elizabeth Gilbert, talking about her new book 'Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear'. I think what I like about Elizabeth is her humor and I love a girl who will drop an F-bomb in front of a room full of strangers. She writes like I would think to myself, a flowing stream of consciousness narrative with sarcasm sprinkled in among a few choice words, totally right up my alley.
She started her talk by reading an excerpt from the book. It talks about living your creative life, whatever that creativity means to you.
"and while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner--continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you--is a fine art, in and of itself. Because creativing living is where Big Magic will always abide"
Whoa. It's big stuff. I wish I could have recorded her talking because her responses to the Q&A session were like whoa, change the way you see yourself kind of responses. She goes on to talk about fear. Fear and creativity go hand and hand. Wherever there is a creative thought there is fear right behind. You become afraid of so many things that it steals the ability for you to find the jewels hidden within you. Fear of not being good enough, fear that others have already done it better, afraid your dreams are embarrassing or afraid of so many things.
She ended by telling us that she was sorry. Sorry because she would not be doing a signing line and personalizing books. She did however go to the publishing company's warehouse and sign over 20,000 books ahead of time. She said this was the hard part of creativity, you sometimes have to say no to things you love in order to keep yourself healthy. She is doing her biggest book tour ever and knew that in order to do that she would have to say no to meeting us individually.
She ended the session by reading a poem by Louise Erdrich which also makes you think...
Advice to Myself
by Louise Erdrich
Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.
