Half of the Brain :
the place all those random thoughts that flit through my head each day go to die

playing in the dirt
I weeded the flower beds this evening. I love playing in the dirt there's something therapeutic about it.

We've worked hard on the landscaping the last couple of weeks and I finally got around to buying my annuals:petunias, cockscomb, flossflower, and a beautiful cascading plant with small blue flowers that I *think* is nolana. If so, it's considered a weed in some regions but I've discovered I must have a natural affinity for weeds---I put in variegated chinese privets along the side of the house because they appear to grow well here and I like the lalmost-lacy look of them and then was informed by one of those superior types that knows more than I do that most professional landscapers consider them nuisances....like weeds. heehee :-)

The azaleas are gone, but the hawthorn down by the mailbox is budding, the day lillies are blooming, I picked my first home-grown rose tonight off my new bushes, and chopped the cilantro for dinner right after I plucked it from the herb pot. I'm already mourning summer's passing and its barely spring.

I'll plant the rest of the flowers tomorrow-- more dirt--yeah!
(Mom didn't let me play in sandboxes as a kid and me thinks this near dirt obsession could be the result.)

can the idealistic monster come out and play?
Here's what I think: A life well-lived is a creative life.
I'm not talking about creativity as attached to a specific action like painting or writing or sewing or cooking, though I admit I *could* be talking about a type of creativity that for some people manifests itself in a particular activity. I'm moreso talking about creativity in general and about finding ways to infuse it into our everyday lives. I say: It takes enormous amounts of creativity to get by in this world and still carve out of it something meaningful for yourself.

A friend of mine lives in Europe and she reports that the Europeans don't tend to value the ulcer-causing, heart-attack- inducing, stress-laden work-'til-you- can't-possibly-work-any-longer lifestyle to the extent that Americans do, but I wonder. . . could that lifestyle become less repressive and more enjoyable if we all learned to think outside the box just a bit--- if we could approach our respective boxes a tad more creatively might we find they cease to function as boxes.

It strikes me this is the sentiment behind that phrase so prevalent in areas of the academy, "my research and my teaching are constantly in dialogue". At first I thought such a statement was an effort to prevent having two separate or disparate agendas in your professional life, but I came across the phrase again last week as the tag to someone's email and now that I have some distance from the academy it occurs to me lots of us have more than one project on our desk or more than one task assigned to us at any given moment. So no, I think such a statement is more an attempt to use the parts you love about your job to get through the parts you don't. Most of the academy types I've encountered were either phenomenol teachers or outstanding and prolific scholoars-- very few were indeed both.
If your heart's in your reasearch, flex those creative muscles and bring your research into the classroom and if your heart's in your classroom.... vice versa.

I sure what I'm calling creativity could be called any number of different things but the million-dollar question is how do we foster it, develop it, find it or teach it.

It's an absolutely gorgeous day in my neck of the woods. I'm surrounded by people fortunate by many of today's materialistic standards-- nobody's worried about having enough to eat or meeting all the bills at the end of the month or job security or the illness of a loved one-- but something is most definitely in the water.
Today has been the complainingest day and I just want stand on my desk and at the top of my lungs shout .... "what's the problem people?"

The problem is that they're burned out and mired in a muck that for most is merely perceptual.
Not that I don't undestand the perceptual bog-- one simply has to look down the page to see my own, masquerading as some form of writer's block. But what about all those people who find themselves perpetually bogged down? Isn't there anything about your life you like, anything at all you enjoy or look forward to or find pleasure in?

Jumpstart!
Quick drive and just don't turn the car off:

I'm thinkin I'll start posting again.
I write better the more I write and I need to feel like I'm writing more, so I think I'll start posting again.

Status Report:
Lately I've found myself in the midst of an on-going love/hate relationship with "the box". Most days I hate it.
I'm experienceing bouts of writer's frustration which have trickled down to effect every kind of writing I do--including email and blogging. I sit down (at the keyboard or with a notebook) and have all this stuff to say and my fingers just can't move fast enough to keep up with my brain and my brain has to work soooooo very hard to remember the way it wanted to say what it wanted to say, that in the end I find myself thinking the entire process simply isn't worth the effort.

The only writing I'm doing at the moment is more appropriately called "listing"-- listing just enough to cue my own thought processes. I have pages and pages and pages of work notes that are simply "listed abbreviations"
pg 189-- c 4 RM,
pg 200 c n12 --cogent JH overview,
pg 242-- interp of RATW YUCK!
I go on like this for pages and pages. Each notation is at least a paragraph of written-out notes. I'm talking notes here, not quality prose, yet I *still* can't manage to get my head on paper.

The fact that I'm even writing this is perhaps a good sign that the worst is over, but alas I have so much more to say...
For now, I'll just have to leave it at :
green thumbs
eating waffles forthwith
leo and rossi
retail theory
postmodern movies

Check back and see if in the next few weeks I can't actually work up to blogging about them....