Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • The energy well

    graphic novelist James Persichetti

    I love noticing connections across disparate patches of life: how dance infuses writing and gardening infuses art and art infuses dance.

    I’m still processing the many workshops at last weekend’s writing conference, reviewing my notes, and appreciating the session titled “Refilling Your Creative Well,” led by graphic novelist/writing coach James Persichetti.

    He took an old trope — time management — and refreshed it as energy management.

    And he shared an idea that’s been banging around social media for awhile but that is new to me: Rest is not a reward for doing hard work. Rest is a requirement for doing hard work.

    The question he raised: What if we budget creative energy the way we budget money? In order to spend energy, we need to have some energy banked. I like this metaphor.

    Looking back, I realize that I burned a huge amount of creative energy preparing for the conference, getting to the conference, being at the conference absorbing information and meeting people and tackling micro-writing exercises. So I shouldn’t be surprised that it took me four days to feel something other than creative lethargy when I got home.

    I’m glad to take a few minutes this morning to think about the value of rest, to respect it as a power source. Nia dance practice asks me to be aware of my physical energy, to dance my “today body.” Because of Persichetti’s presentation, I’m thinking the same way about my creative energy.

    What’s in the creative well today, and how will I draw upon it?

  • La Vie Dansante

    I expect everyone has their favorite Jimmy Buffett song, and there are so many lively ones to choose from. I bonded most with the entire album “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” because of its mix of lively and melancholy lyrics.

    I wasn’t thinking of the master of Margaritaville when I wanted music to accompany my morning five stages routine, which my Nia pals all know is a great stretching, wriggling thing that makes all the joints happy.

    But queued up as though waiting for me was Buffett’s “La Vie Dansante,” French for “the dancing life.” It was perfect on a beautiful spring morning, upbeat but with an undercurrent of melancholy.

    Lyrics to live by:

    Feel it all with a willing heart
    Every stop, theres a place to start
    If you know how to play the part with feeling
    I play with feeling

    Why don’t you wander and follow the dancing life
    On the night wind that takes you just where you want
    Thats all you want

    Here’s Aaron Neville’s version, which has its own fine cadence.

  • More garden whimsy

    Living in the Friendly neighborhood (named for Friendly Street, which runs through it, which was named to honor 19th-century era Eugene mayor Sam Friendly) is wonderful. It’s a mix of starter homes and fancy ones. It includes two schools, four parks and some churches. Families with little ones walk here. Elders with their dogs walk here. Teens on skateboards and scooters and other weird contraptions angst out, laugh, play incomprehensible music. Some neighbors keep chickens. We’re in walking distance of grocery stores, food trucks, restaurants.

    And the gardens. I so love the gardens. You just never know what you’re going to see. We walk by the yard pictured above three or four times a week. Today we noticed that the cutest geese seem to have taken over. I love the ones at the top of the wall, peering down on the others.

    So grateful that we are not constrained by the rules of a homeowners association.