Formulaic Creative Process

“Combine everything and you will have your answer. You will have yourself.”

I have begun the down from British Columbia’s mountaintop of graceful living. I just got my last returned mail from Canada, postmarked from Minneapolis on March 18th. The second sign was an empty bilingual Centrum multivitamin canister. One hundred of those and sixty-eight days later and I’m back to working like I was in college. Perhaps a regression, working bit by bit, twelve hours on the weekends, no more than thirty five during the week. The full-time “real” job search goes on concurrently. As I find moments of sanctuary, the muse in the transition from college graduation –> Olympics –> June is constantly being revealed to me.

For instance, midmorning, with the majority of the routing complete, a moment of precipitousness stuck me. A revelation in a window of time that poured into me for maybe five minutes. It was that period of writer’s inspiration. The moment was successful in breaking the internal and external tension of the moment.

Later, talking at lunch, and gazing out over the background of Island Lake with a boat of three young fishermen in the foreground, the focus of the conversation was about the growing discordance as we built. Behind it was reaching the same end with very different means. The same feelings of being out of tune, different harmonics playing without words. All this seems to happen around this time as I get on the familiar track of getting off track from where I had been. It is common to June. I began to feel Angst creep back, anxiety on deck, waiting to strike me in a moment of weakness.

Unbeknownst to me things were working themselves out behind my back, though somehow, I knew it, I could feel it. The ideas I jotted down upon a piece of cedar became clear and present hours later. Intuitively I made a note to send a text. Turns out, hours later, that this person is en route to Duluth. Though we hadn’t spoken in months, something – It (that combination of everything) was driving me to relay that similar moment of connection.

I had been thinking about Canada and Squamish quite a bit, recently. Contained within the letter I was due to receive there is timeless information, even in today’s digital age. Opening it tonight and the words rushed at me. I quickly read it, re-read it, and pored over the pictures inside.

The wave function rebounds, the formulaic creative process holds true.