But out of limitations comes creativity.
quote by Debbie Allen
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Magpie, My Keeper, Is Flying - Upon Freeing the Gift of Creativity Turned Inward
.
for Elaine Bellezza, Beloved Anima-as-Fate
'There is only one real deprivation, I decided this morning, and that is not to be able to give one's gift to those one loves most...The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.' - May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
This afternoon while still somewhat hungover from last night's rich meal and several glasses of strong red wine, I stumbled as one does when hungover, only today without feet but with eyes, upon the above quote by May Sarton. I had awakened this morning with fragments of a dream, repetitive of other dreams the past few months, where I am carrying something precious and just cannot put it down in any old place or upon just any available surface. I cannot put it down until I find the right surface and location.
These dreams are full of torrential flood waters, or backed up, stagnant water, toilets full of filth and pungent bright orange dark urine days old and fermenting. I cannot unhand the burden even though the urge to pee or flee or drive a car away or into flood waters is strong. I must not put down the burden odd as it is; it is my laptop carrying case made of canvas. It is large enough to carry not only my laptop but also many books with which I cannot, will not be parted from as they are the must-have-with-me-always 'bread', my staple and stability in a given to me world out of balance.
I have understood the dreams only a little - something within the psyche is flooding up, over-spilling or has already, has not been adequately canalized, channeled, streamed and guided, shaped and formed. Or flushed. I knew that eventually, as dreams do when one sits consciously, patiently, persistently with them, they would yield their messages to me, and upon revelation these must be obeyed, brought out into the world, Carl Jung having said that one has a moral responsibility to dreams once they are kenned and must be conscientiously acted upon in the outer world. Just dreaming is not enough. Everyone dreams but not very many know to dream them out into the world, to let their messages unfurl, flood and flow to bring forth new consciousness, to reshape old forms no longer adequate to self, place and time into symbol and their sense, usually not literal.
And thus, only just now, upon opening up haphazardly in a book about Dostoevsky and his struggle with addictions which mirror the profound compulsion to create at any cost perhaps beyond one's capacities to renew oneself, I find May Sarton's quote and suddenly the dreams clarify and sharpen into focus; I understand them as the burden of creativity too long turned inward, the burden of writing, the burden of poetry which I have carried heavily for most of my life since middle school when I was 11 or 12 years old when books became my lifeline, my link to existence that I could live on in spite of not wanting to do so. Written words, books, kept me from disappearing though I was and remain a mostly invisible word.
And thus the floods. One cannot ignore them. Alphabets tumble and roil. One dare not ignore them. One must see them without a choice to not see them. In them I am suddenly made visible, bright orange p*ss pots and all. I am both appalled and pleased. My burden is upon my knees.
The backed up water, the urine, is creativity. A somewhat odd symbol of creativity, there is more than enough evidence that urination is symbolic of self expression which is creativity. In ancient Rome the highly valued dirt from the urinals of boys' schools was collected to be used as a cosmetic in order to restore youthful energy and looks. A young boy, or puer in Latin, is an archetypal symbol of ongoing creativity and inspiration, the puer aeternas, the eternal youth, well springs of ongoing creativity still imaged in solid fountains of the world where eternal waters flow from the peni of cherubic youth.
I have struggled my entire life with a strong urge to create, to write, to express in words that creative daemon within which torments no matter the completion of a poem or essay, a lecture, a psalm. And now my dreams have had me consciously, urgently seeking a place to put the burden down, to perhaps come to it anew. I imagine that landing the burden means bringing it down to earth, manifesting creativity all the more by bringing my efforts to others for the strongest part of the compulsive urge in my creativity has been to contribute one good thing, one good poem or piece of writing which in some way might further the culture even if only by a flea's leg length.
The dreams urge me to let the urine flow, to let the flood waters indeed flood over, to be less self conscious of what I write and say but to have at it all and to say my say. And to let whatever waves there are crest and break upon ever receptive banks and shores whose duty it is to allow what may come from motion without complaint, the more compliant toward as yet to be fully formed purposes as yet to be scored.
Synchronistically, a few days ago I listened to a lecture by poet Allen Ginsberg about Walt Whitman and his imitators, those who were goodly influenced by his effulgent, self indulgent style, his garrulous poems which presumed to express the very expansiveness of the North American continent over-flooded by a plague of itinerant, persistent poachers and prophets from Europe to Eastern disembarkation and then inland and Westward, compelled to overtake land and native peoples in their possessed, pushed wake. Ginsberg imagined himself to be a timely extension of this unruly school, as savage as the projected upon land and justly-resistant, resident humanity stretched beyond known bounds and sounds. Blood drowned and pounded the god-hounded land even now is flooded by unleashed mighty rivers seeking, if rivers seek at all, to undo and renew in horse shoe and other shapes the crimes of consciousness compelled to overtake while leaving it up to human souls to repent and repair, to prepare for more powerful insurgencies of land and Self ever seeking new and nower expressions of dirt and deity. There's enough history beneath layers to support the scarp and scrape of momentary yet monumental motions finally given mouths to utter what lies both beneath and within the heaping huzzahs of here here here full and deep. As in my dream, it is hard to steer in such surpassing tides and currents. Still, I am searching for holy campground that I may lay my burden down.
I have no wish to imitate Whitman nor Ginsberg - though both are easily imitated since they did so themselves, an occupational hazard for writers - but only to be obedient to the daemon, that urgent, emergent, creative force within. It rushes within and against me. No matter whether derived of the grandiose American continent and the even more grandiose sky or not, I have all too successfully braced against it in fear of failure, reprisal or, worse, complete indifference from others. My dreams now urge floods and resultant coagulations, they bring creative splurges to ground from hand to the hard world. And Nature, too, is indifferent but begs none the less and all the more to be given utterance and response.
Respondeo ergo sum. I respond, therefore I am. I respond, therefore the other, earth, all her ants, is as long as there are eyes, ears, and scanning minds to acknowledge and touch, wrestle, caress, shape - some in scansions - outer from inner, inner from outer, landscapes to be all too quickly discarded in time for what is sung just ahead. And seen. Or hoped, all praise to telescopes. We would be they, so addicted to horizons, to bring them close.
Something there is needs completion via coagulation, forming, shaping, and sharing with whomever may be open to clods delivered. If not, rivers will, as they will without reason, continue to overrun their banks and insist upon covering designated previous cultivations. Let then excess of creativity have its say, play out, and leave the critical post-considerations to others. I will surely sit and ponder spent what spills forth, to shape, to edit, to discard. And watch my little yard sink beneath needed and needy floods.
I will have done with deprivation and bring myself, what I have shaped and misshapen, to the world. These things, this burden, have I most loved and felt responsible for, have born the shame of. I have fought and have failed utterly again and again though my attempts have been, and still are, sincere though not blameless. Fear has been my encampment, a longing beneath knowing feet in secret cellars just beyond reach of contracted hands forever spelling hunger. I know open bastion doors and windows to now fling beyond embankments what has been wrung out of my floes and woes though hands wither from too much turning against and inward. What a relief to burst beyond boundaries too long successfully restraining.
I recently wrote a poem about much too too solid bastions of self, of forceful puer energy ramming through and over and into long buried storms and petrified forms, of passion mangling the delusion of 'norms' ignoring too sensitive alarms. Given May Sarton's May revelation this morning I now understand that the poem is about more than eros, it is about that powerful creative/destructive force, the daemon/tyro that ever urges outward intent on making and staking Self in new land and at least one aging man wrenched and rendered from dried and calcified encrustations. I am, to borrow from the insistent dream image, beginning to leak. And to break open.
Archeology - What The Stele Says 'Upon Taking A Much Younger Lover'
That this old ground yields to plow stuns.
What begins to be, earth swell, breaks
root-room open to blood means.
Old skeins tear upon what is new terrain,
hunger worn, long appended. There is
no blame for pain is the blessing.
All hurt now stings twilight quaked into being.
Your breath falls upon me now, taut, sinew,
bruising hand, purple inside flares warrior nerves
[...] Read more
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
So-called Chaos
Deadlines, meetings and contracts all breached
D-days and structure responsibility
Have-to's and need-to's and get-to's by three
Eleventh hours and upset employees
I want to be naked, running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos, that youd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless, flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations and return to who I was meant to be
Heartburn and headaches and soon-to-be ulcers
Compulsive yearnings non-stop to please others
I want to be naked, running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos, that youd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless, flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations at the shoes upon my feet
All wont be lost if Im governed by my own uniqueness
Stop lights won't work I'll get home sound and safe regardless
Wont deem me had if I'm led by my own rulelessness
My fire wont quell and Ill be harm-free and distressless
Trust me
Line towing, and helping, expectations up to living
Inside box obeying, inside line cutting
I want to be naked, running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos, that youd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless, flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations at the shoes upon my feet
I want to be naked, running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos, that youd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless, flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations and return to who I was meant to be
song performed by Alanis Morissette
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Blissfulness
As I watch beliefs you hold,
Crumble and fall.
It saddens me to know,
Your madness stored
Continues to show!
Let go of limitations!
Let go of situations!
Let go of contemplations...
That keep you stalled and undernourished!
As I observe you praying for release from 'sins'...
I think to myself,
'How did these fears begin? '
Hypocrisies committed is all I see,
By those entrusted but dismiss honesty!
As I watch beliefs you hold,
Crumble and fall.
It saddens me to know,
Your madness stored
Continues to show!
A growth and appreciation of self has gone!
As you carry on looking hopeless and forelorn!
And all that needs to be done,
Is an opening of your eyes!
Cease fulfilling your life with alibis...
Shared without vision with those who lie.
Let go of limitations!
Let go of situations!
Let go of contemplations...
That keep you stalled and undernourished!
What do you believe will encourage you to flourish?
Without 'things' to feed,
Temporary desires bleeding your needs!
This is not pleasing to you at all!
Shopping for enlightenment,
Can not be found in crowded malls!
Tempting with teases to empty your pockets!
Leaving you to remorse habits you can drop...
By stopping it!
Let go of limitations!
Let go of situations!
Let go of contemplations...
That keep you stalled and undernourished!
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.
quote by Edward de Bono
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Creativity Can't Make Up For Depression
Creativity cannot make up for depression
which it attempts to cure,
it can’t replace it with the kind of supersession
that made spurious lure
of Christianity when it induced some Jews
to make up for their loss
of their identity, condemned, they thought, to lose
unless they chose the cross.
No, creativity provides a transient high,
and then becomes a wraith,
for those who’re so depressed they find they cannot fly,
because they’ve lost their faith
in their ability to reproduce success,
which if it is not con-
stantly repeated is a letter whose address
appears to be, “Dear John.”
Inspired by an article (“In Praise of the Crack-U: A novelist peers through darkness to find glittering gems in writing and art”) , by the South African-born novelist Jeanette Winterson, lesbian lover of Julian Barnes’s widow, Pat Kavanagh, in the October 17,2009 WSJ (A report about her lesbian relations includes the information: Blessed with good looks that led many to compare her to Katharine Hepburn, she secured a nonspeaking part in Under Milk Wood. “I never got paid, but I did get to snog Richard Burton, ” she said) . Winterson writes:
The stories are well known; Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and went mad. Sylvia Plath gassed herself. Anne Sexton committed suicide. Emily Dickinson was manic-depressive. Virginia Woolf worked through alternating bouts of madness and depression for most of her life. The mad, bad and dangerous wild boys of high art and popular culture make great copy—whether it's Caravaggio on the run for murder after one of his rages, or Allen Ginsberg, naked and drunk, howling through Manhattan. The women—Plath, Frida Kahlo, Maria Callas, Janis Joplin—imploding like dark stars, are the stuff of obsession…. Longing is painful. Every work of art is an attempt to bring into being the object of loss. The pictures, the music, the poems and the performances are an intense engagement with loss. While one is in the act of making, one is not in loss, and one has meaning. The fierce crashes that happen to many creative people when a piece of work is done (read Hemingway on this) come out of the sense that however good the work, it has not answered the loss. The strange thing about creative work is that it can have enormous value for others while its maker is left ravaged. The ancient Greeks understood this as the price of an encounter with a god—the divine forces enter the human and use him or her as an instrument, only to be ultimately destroyed. But I do not believe that creativity is destructive or divine. I believe it is the part of us that gives shape and voice to our innermost reality. This is frightening. Encounters with the real, in particular what we really feel, are something we generally try to avoid. Art mediates the encounter, allowing us to get nearer to our longing and our loss, to risk more, to dare more. Yet for the maker, the exposure is not mediated; it is total and terrifying. That is why so many creative people cut themselves off from their own experience, using drugs or drink or sex or shipwreck to avoid absolute exposure to the pain of creativity. When Whitman turned to face his dark angel, to wrestle with himself, he was acknowledging his own loss, his own longing, his own unstaunched wound.
10/18/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
You've got to know your limitations. I don't know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren't too many limitations, if I did it my way.
classic quote by Johnny Cash
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Performance art is the ultimate in creativity. Since it has so many possibilities at creativity, it's essence tends to become creativity.
quote by Jack Bowman
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Stream Line Consciousness
Big brother voyeur blimps unidentified spies
uncle sam peeping toms patrolling skies
bird brain police intelligence
remote viewing homeland pest control
pentagon private eye monitoring the public's every move
mass produced micro chips intercepting prayers patrolling citizens from heaven
Bentham's Panopticon NSA
super computer surveillance cameras
world police spying Manhattan streets
'Athens plummets Euro death spiral
suicide rates soar deepening into despair'
haaretz..the post.. the times
blogs tribunes dailies all in a mad gab
headlong headline attention grabbing scramble
'Yugoslavia - Iraq - Egypt - Yemen - Iran - Syria - United States'
bilderberg building blocks New American Century post apocalyptic prophecy
'foreign mercenaries …national guard...DOD
homeland security to amass covert munitions stockpile
Americans on guard anxieties mounting surrounding
the stripping of amendments 1st if you swing to your left
2nd if you stand on the right
whispers of martial law circulate Anarchical reverberations
emanate from internet Alt culture epicenters
bottle necking global tensions'
'common feeling of deepening disappointment...
heightened expectations...
people expecting an explosive situation over the
next few weeks'
...riot police respond 'to preserve public order'
public roads barricaded to 'protect security of citizens'
'blatant act of censorship
western mainstream media staying away
from Myanmar massacres of Mohammedan Angels
further showing strong anti Muslim bias'
'Media blackout Burmese army
seeking coverage under propaganda blankets'
from the middle east throughout the western world
planet consciousness blurring lines between conspiracy/reality
conflicting global network narratives multiply violent scenarios daily
Victims in a world wide scramble
Government Banking Military
[...] Read more
poem by Gregory Allen Uhan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Comet Strike Creativity
no time like a comet
stealing in impacts
with flame tremendous
velocity into our sea
of diverse life creativity
instantly evaporating
all waters of old creativity
of would have been not
written recedes back
into dark matter
never been never
known never been
a glorious burst
of wonder igniting
souls into explosive
bursts of sudden
bliss awesome
appreciation
contributing to new
seas of creativity
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Night Turned Into Day
my night is turned into day
my day is turned into night
thoughts ideas creativity fight
with bodies endurance to write
time ticks exhaustion due slays
mind rapture pace swift runs
body at rest at last fail lays
creativity passion turns burns
long hours of night wither away
creativity turns night into day
my night is turned into my day
poem by Terence George Craddock
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Creativity Creates (The "C" Fever)
Creating ceaseless comforts
Creatively created creation,
Concisely clear content,
Clueless cementing composition,
Caressing crafty craft,
Congrats clubbed commendable creation,
Commanding ceaseless circles,
Creating cloudy colors,
Crawling calmly,
Counting countless counts,
Cool celebrations convicts
Cremating conventional classes
Costing clueless camouflage
Cruelty camping carcasses
Champions cuddle compositions,
Commenting courageously,
Converting classical cases,
Crap claps contingently,
Clamping coarse comments,
Continents commends creativity,
Cloning creations costs,
Cream-less celebrations,
Creed cries copiously,
Counting complications,
Creativity clears census,
Courting cobra courage,
Cognitive cellular copyright,
Combating conventional cage,
Censoring commutation,
Copied crap communication
Crimson crowd creeds
Course-less cupid citation
Closing comment comments,
Care cannot cease,
Charming charm charms,
Creativity creates crease.
poem by Diwakar Pokhriyal
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Literature and Quantum Physics
Mind spoke:
I have been the Driver of all history
for animal and man,
I've fueled Progress,
built cities,
discovered science
literature, poetry
all of this due to me:
Mind.
Imagination Spoke:
You Mind
are not of consequence
without me
Imagination.
Whatever spark might have
fired your brain
came from my fashioning
events in you Mind
to creativity,
to art
for you are merely physical seat
the vehicle,
But I Imagination
am the driver.
Body Spoke:
The two of you have no independent existence,
no living space
without me Body.
I am that temple
which houses you.
I am the physical portal
which interacts with the
world.
Whatever you can see or think Mind
or you Imagination, can imagine
is filtered thorough me Body
and flesh though I am
few doubt my ultimate power.
For surely as you both have your place
but both of you are mental most
and cannot walk or run,
[...] Read more
poem by Lonnie Hicks
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It's a way of life for me.
quote by Ayrton Senna
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Mind is consciousness which has put on limitations. You are originally unlimited and perfect. Later you take on limitations and become the mind.
quote by Ramana Maharshi
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Conditioning
Well youre not, youre not who you think you are
Well we think that you are john or dave
But youre not, youre not who you think you are
Jumbled mass of preconceived ideas
From our birth we were given an identity
People told us we were great or small
From our birth we were given rules of right or wrong
Not forgetting the bullies at school
The world teaches us to think that life is full of limitations
The world tries to make us think that there are loads of limits
The world teaches us to think that life is full of limitations
The world tries to make us think that there are loads of limits
Welcome to conditioning
Welcome to conditioning
And as the world makes us feel great
And as the world makes us feel small
Oh so convinced of our identity
If we only knew it we just cant believe it we just wont believe it
Leading us to think that we are such a success
Conning us to think that we are just a failure
Leading us to think that we are so intelligent
Conning us to think that we are just a do-do do-do
Welcome to conditioning
Welcome to conditioning
Who is to say what is what
Welcome to conditioning
Who is to say what is what
Welcome to conditioning
Who is to say what is what
Er, sorry, ha ha
Who is to say what is what
Welcome to conditioning
Who is to say what is what
Welcome to conditioning
Who is to say what is what
Welcome to conditioning
song performed by Howard Jones
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Salutations To Thee...
lines erase
limitations vanish
rivers don't freeze
seas continue the ebb n tide
stars sparkle
galaxies keep expanding and contracting
the sun rises and sets
the moon wanes and waxes
we go on locked
within crass emotions
play-field of baser instincts
lines erase
limitations vanish
when breath decides
to play truant...
breath holds the key
and locks and unlocks
at its free will!
poem by Indira Babbellapati
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love begs to cross the line
it is late grandma again
the world she is in
that wraps me in
a strange coldness,
a dense vibration that stirs
the senses of my other faculty
we know each other's presence
silence speaks volumes
of truth at times like this
me; a physique with all its limitations
she; a soul with all its limitations
between us, a love that begs to cross the line
....other faculty means....extra sensory perception
poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Life Defining
Life is not defined by set limitations
for life defies all prior set limitations
I see all beings as evolving
from God within God
moving ever closer
passing ever further
plant-life to mineral
microbe to mollusk
muskrat to monkey
tad-pole to personage
moving ever closer
passing ever further
until the self fulfilled finale of eternity
open ended arrival of divine destiny
(surely the time has come
never has it passed
always has it been
Here and Now
immediate intimacy of the moment)
watering seeds
pruning weeds
upturning stones
nurturing conscious fruit
harvesting human truth
I see evolution being perhaps
no more than the process by which
consciousness regains its identity
from animal to amaranth
earth-garden where angels
groom and earn their wings
poem by Gregory Allen Uhan
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
If I Had Fed On Thoughts Of Limitations
If I had fed on thoughts of limitations,
You would not know...
How to spell my name correctly.
Or be aware of my existence.
Or hear me laugh.
Cry.
Or wonder why...
I accept defeat gracefully.
To me defeat is fleeting.
If not self inflicted.
You see...
And you do not have to agree with me.
Each step forward I decide to take...
I make.
To only compete with myself in the doing.
If I had fed on thoughts of limitations,
I would not be aware I could reach beyond them.
There would be too many excuses,
To use to pick from right under my feet.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Just Because I Understand
The disdain and your displeasure,
Have both been shown with equal venom.
Your point has been made.
And so has the confirmation of your tunnel vision.
But understand one thing...
My patience has nothing to do with you.
It is because of my patience,
Your limitations are more tolerated.
But that does not make you less the threat!
Just because I understand,
Does not mean I will be less protected.
Like I said...
Your limitations are more tolerated.
But that does not make you less the threat!
Just because I understand,
Does not mean I will be less protected.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!