natural salvage

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Creativity is a shapechanger. One moment it takes this form, then next that. It is like a dazzling spirit who appears to us all, yet is hard to describe for no one agrees on what they saw in that brilliant flash. Are the wielding of pigments and canvas, or paint chips and wallpaper, evidence of existence? How about a pen and paper, flower borders on a garden path, building a university? Yes, yes. Ironing a collar well, cooking up a revolution? Yes. Touching with love the leaves of a plant, pulling down the big deal, tying off the loom, finding one’s voice, loving someone well? Yes. Catching the hot body of the newborn, raising a child to adulthood, helping raise a nation from its knees? Yes. Tending to a marriage like the orchard it is, digging for psychic gold, finding the shapely word, sewing the blue curtain. All are of the creative life. 


-excerpted from Women Who Run with Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes