Tonight I will wait

for the sun to set

I will wait until the turkeys roam into the woods&

deer come slow and still to graze in leftover light

Tonight I will allow myself to dance to music

All tealights and bare wood floor, curtains drawn, door locked

Maybe I will put on the wild summer dress I have yet to wear

Under the true orange three quarter sleeved blouse

My feet bare or in socks

Tonight I will have a small party in my place with cheese&

crackers and I will go to the corner store for a bottle of wine,

that cheese, sharp cheddar or something smoothe like cream

My van will make it that far

Tonight I will spin and let the images flash or linger in the room

Colors, sounds, touches, tastes, scents I cannot identify be celebrated

For dancing is a celebration and tonight

Tonight I will not wait for that missing Other

If I end up crying in a circle of cheerful colors on a floor in

Dim candlelight that removes the years

It is the absence of another that allows this freedom

Tonight you see

I promise myself that tonight will be the night

I allow myself to dance alone in the dark without the critic I carry

Everywhere I go

Creativity is an interaction with the internal and external environment, a response to time and place. There is a need to describe, define, and make our reaction real to ourselves and others.

If you accept the notion that all life “as we know it” is made of the same essential elements that somehow come out of one primordial ‘moment’, and you let go for a moment of trying to explain to yourself or anyone else how or if something can be born of nothing, here also lie the origins of creativity.

Once a need to communicate one’s perceptions with others; whether to simply make emotional and intellectual connections that confirm, basically, that others can and do appreciate and share your experience; or in the face of losing everything because your integrity as a being cannot remain intact without responding out loud in some way that may not be accepted in its’ time or at all; even if to simply bear witness instead of moving on, eyes averted, stomach in knots. And yet, it isn’t about right and wrong at the center.

Creativity is also a practical problem-solving approach to the things that impede or defy our needs. An opener for cans, friction to create a spark for the fire, for example.

Widely recognized creativity can lead to joy and sorrow, riches and/or the most brutal of incarcerations, even torture and death. What does it mean that a country, a government is so threatened by a poem, a painting, an invention or expressed opinion? Perhaps institutions, as organisms in their own right need to oppose change.

Newton’s third law:“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This seems relevant but I do not know why. Creativity is more like a sprial of chaos that is anything but chaos.

As if we are in love with laughing eyes and warm glows

Across the gym floor not caring who knows

Or under the stars in the month of June

The stars spinning crazily in the dark of a new moon

Break into a waltz while walking through Times Square

Have everyone surround us and stare and not care

Exit by the alleyway under windows and fire escapes

Endlessly spinning the city's landscapes

Shall we dance in the mud or the icy spring stream

Shall we dance as one can only dance in a dream

You will be my Fred Astaire and I your Cyd Charisse

Our pictures in an album so many can share us

I will dance to music I play in my room

Across town you will accompany me to the same tune

We will be strangers who meet on the street

And begin dancing to the busker's drumbeat

Unable to be still in the enveloping heat

As if we are in love with laughing eyes and warm glows

Across the gym floor not caring who knows

Or under the stars in the month of June

Somewhere, they will be playing our tune

I am standing on a slatted wooden porch in the sun full of happiness looking at my brand new patent leather shoes, they are red and wonderful. The creaky screen door opens and an elderly woman admires my shoes then says "Come in, I have something for you." I step into the familiar cool of her kitchen. I am two.

(The shoes went the way of shoes, I carried the stuffed dog she gave me through four more moves and rescued it from the trash at 17yo when my mother threw it out---all worn and loved to pieces---)

Looking out the window at night, I watched two girls laughing and walking together and remembered someone I knew a long time ago. I am quiet as one of the girls steps into my garden and bends down to remove one solar light from the path. As she walks away I say, softly from behind the screen "Please put that back", after the startle she said, sounding like any teenage kid talking to mom "But it is sooo cool." I laugh. "Yes. It is, that is why I want it in my garden." Today, I am missing that night.