Creativity & Everyday Miracles- This post is informed by conversations with Dr. Bruce Sawhill, Stanford educated theoretical physicist and mathematician.
Creativity and Everyday Miracles
When Bruce was a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, he lived in an old sheepherder’s cabin in the river canyon east of downtown, a tiny place with a sod roof held up by bowed beams and heated by a wood stove.
Like many academics at early phases of their careers, at least in the late 20th century, he had two identifying characteristics.
1. He moved a lot. It’s almost like being in the military—a succession of appointments in a succession of geographies, sometimes many time zones apart from each other, one passing like a ghost through one community after another.
2. Every move accompanied by prodigious quantities of books and papers, perhaps the main component of one’s possessions.
Now, we’ll turn it over to Bruce to tell his story.
Reframing the Question
One spring day I decided to pare down my possessions because I was tired of the packing and unpacking. I went through my sixty or so boxes of books and selected 23 boxes’ worth.
There was a bookstore in town that bought old books for cash or store credit.
bookshelves
A few days after I dropped off my carful of books, I got a call from the bookstore. They were offering me a considerable sum for the pile of books. In retrospect, it probably worked out to be about a dollar a pound.
It was one of those bright sunny restless windy spring days where the land no longer smelled like wet flinty stone and lifeless soil, but instead had the odors of green shoots, the sweetness of new willow and alder leaves unfurling. I emerged from the bookstore whistling, windfall in hand.
Valley in springtime, New Mexico
As Willa Cather said in Death Comes For The Archbishop,
Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!
Imbued with this spirit, I took my fistful of cash and drove a few miles south to a tree nursery.
There I bought two good-sized cottonwood trees that were taller than I and perhaps 2 inches in diameter, sitting in big black 15-gallon plastic pots and tagged with fluttering tags, plus an apple tree for good measure.
I drove home with the foliage protruding from the hatchback of my car, rustling and buffeting.
Tree nursery selection
Over the next couple of days I dug holes in the unforgiving hard caliche New Mexico soil, digging a few inches, filling the hole with water to soften the next few inches, rinse and repeat.
It required a pickaxe, sledgehammer, and crowbar. If I had possessed dynamite, I would have been tempted to try it.
I planted one tree to the west of the cabin, hoping for shade from the brutal afternoon sun, though the benefits were certain to be years off.
There’s something about trees that inspires irrational hope. Trees are nonplussed by rock-hard soil, they are patient, roots keep trying.
Side note: Why are there words without opposites like nonplussed? Who is ever plussed? Or gruntled?
Only after I had planted all of the trees did I pause and reflect what I had just done.
We all know that books, at least modern ones, come from trees via the intermediate step of paper and a lot of chemical processing.
Turning Books Into Trees
I had managed to reverse the process, turning books into trees. An event on first blush so improbable that it would be more likely for a tornado to strike a junkyard and magically assemble a fully operable commercial airliner.
Sometimes accomplishing the impossible just requires a reframing of the problem. Sometimes you don’t even know what you did until you pause to think about it.
Twenty-two years later, with the help of Google Earth, I see the little cabin basking in the shade of substantial trees. I think they are the same ones.
Maybe there is even a hammock between the two I planted a hammock distance apart, with repose aforethought. Maybe somebody is thinking, “What luck! A hammock just fits!”
Cottonwoods and cabin
It wasn’t luck at all.
With gratitude from my studio to yours,
Nancy
Click on the arrow above to catch our interview on Art & Complexity on The Jim Rutt Show.
The Artist’s Journey: Bold Strokes To Spark Creativity is named by BookAuthority as one of the Top 100 Books On Creativity.
As always, I love these posts. I am just catching up on a few….
Re the opposites of words, when my son was about 8, he came home from school and told me, rather cautiously/wistfully, that his behaviour had “been peccable”. He’s always had a rather unconventional way of making up words and phrases – the difficulties arise when other people don’t know the meaning of them.
Warm regards, and thank you for your blog posts, both of you. Iris
What a joy Creativity and Everyday Miracles has been for me from start to finish. I was capivated from Nancy’s intro remarks to Bruce’s story, profound for me, the photos of Valle Caldera, the nursery, of course the books, and the trees today at the once so important cabin. As I’ve said before, Bruce’s writing itself is as fine to me as the ideas. Yes, a new book. And then the stimulation vastness and simplicity of the interview about Complexity and Art, (and ,Science.) Thanks – Mega.
I was cleaning up my studio as I listened and was motivaed to continue the ever changing orderng by Nancy’s comemts on how chaos refects indecision. I’ve also been learning about this in my paintings the last two years with Nancy, the value of simply making a firm decision for the next move and, for me, that moment of choice and possibilies on the edges of chaos and simplicity.
I find the concept that to choose can not only change the environment but that systems, like Nancy teaching us to create art in the Adjacent Possible, also changes the participants. This is particularly relevant in the world we live in today. I believe that evolving consciousness is part of the hope for an evolving future. Your discussion about prematurely choosing constraint before fully exploring the edges is part of my cosmic prayer for leaders today as they chart our future.
Also valued the refections shared about how to create luck – openess to surprises, making time and space for solitude and reflection, and, as you two exemplify, important conversations. I hope for some this may be a benifit of starying in place during the Covid crisis.
More to refect on but must stop for all of our time’s sake. I’ve soemtimes responded for pages and had the sense not to post. Such gifts you offer. Thanks again.
Dear Nancy and Bruce, I loved the story, I live in NM so I also loved the photos. NM is a very enchanting place. I also loved the interview, I turned it on and listened while I painted. I have only just begun taking your classes and have more ugly paintings than anything else but as I listened I picked up on Nancy’s now familiar words about trusting self and using constraint. I held onto everything you said about creativity and truly had an inspired time. By the end I had taken an ugly painting to something I enjoy looking at. I was also intrigued by the flow of pleasant conversation about things that went were way over my head but just felt a wonderful sense of peace. Thank you both for sharing this!
Such a lovely story and the bonus is that it was a true story. Thank you.
What a beautiful story! Thank you!
I loved the story of planting trees. This was my favorite: Sometimes accomplishing the impossible just requires a reframing of the problem.
No not luck .. some kind of knowing without knowing!
Nice story you two!
Denise
I read these posts every Sunday and am always uplifted (there isn’t a down lifted..!) and learn or relearn something thought-provoking. Thank you always! Denise
Thanks so much Denise!
Warmly,
Nancy