Maya Angelou and Releasing the Logjam

from: http://mayaangelou.com

Just this week, I had tea with a friend. We were meeting to brainstorm about bringing Joanna Macy to the Mid-Atlantic region. My friend was keenly interested in the evolving plans since I’ve been dialoguing with Joanna’s assistant about Joanna gracing us in May of 2012.

But I digress. More on Joanna in a later post or two.

What I really wanted to write about is creative juices and logjams. This friend mentioned to me that she and her husband recently had the opportunity to spend the night with Maya Angelou at her house in Virginia. Apparently her husband knew Maya when he was a young boy in CA and his parents helped Maya get an apartment. They signed for the apartment to give the impression that they intended to live there since the landlord was not open to “Blacks” living there. And then they just passed the key over to Maya, much to the chagrin of the apartment owner.

Maya is an amazing woman. Yet her health is not so good these days. She’s in her 80’s now, but she is still writing poetry and creating. And while my friends were there as her houseguests, she read a newer poem to them.

Imagine that. Sitting in Maya Angelou’s house and she with her husky voice reciting a poem – just to you.

Wow.

Maya stated that it’s important to keep on creating. Keep on feeding those inner fires of painting, writing, musing… my words. We can keep on creating up until our last breath…if we so choose.

I pondered Maya’s words over tea and as I drove home. I realized that I have not been creating recently. I have not been tapping into that well within me that can spew silliness or somberness. There has been a logjam in my creative juices and this has not been serving me at all. Truthfully, it has been affecting my health. And that is not such a good thing.

So I am removing the logjam. I’m carefully picking up the lodged pieces within my psyche that are preventing the muse from swimming through. Or is she kayaking? Not sure my muse ever took kayaking lessons. Pretty certain she can swim though. I remember seeing her at summer camp with me doing those laps of the crawl with me. Gosh, that water was cold!

Each one of these logs in the logjam is shaped differently having fallen from different limbs. The trees that dropped these lodged hunks of wood grow in a variety of ecosystems of self. Plus the logjam has accumulated flotsam and jetsam (love those words!) of plastic bottles and bags, a broken baby doll and toy baseball bat among other items. Fragments of my childhood, adolescence and adulthood are stuck there.

My psyche is that of flotsam and jetsam. Removing this detritus carefully from the logjam is akin to surgery. Using dynamite would only blast my emotional state to places that would not serve too well. At least serve in providing safe passage for the muse.

So, tonight I have started to take it apart. The wellies are on. Foul weather gear is donned and I’m removing the mental garbage and prying apart the heavy, wet wood.

My muse is treading water just in front of it, smiling. She approves.

Truth be told, I’ve been working on the logjam for a while but only tonight have I started to see some pieces that can be loosened.

This is a good thing.