This piece was originally published in the 2015 Soundings literary and visual arts journal.
Creative? Are you kidding me?
The most creative thing I do in a day is curl my hair a different… [ ]
direction.
Direction? I have not direction –
I don’t even usually use a hairbrush, can’t you tell?
I spend that hair-brushing time brushing my teeth and going to he… I mean, class.
I spend my nights doing my studies and my days going to class
I don’t have time to wipe my a… umm…
Anyway, I don’t have time for that silly hairbrush,
God Bless – have you seen this mess?!
And I certainly don’t have time to create something quality.
I mean, God took SEVEN days to create, and
according to Pico,
we humans are the best thing God, the all-knowing “Rock” could come up with!
Don’t get me wrong, but I think God could have created something better than an English Major who writes second best
to an Engineer (talk about the Myers-Briggs INTJ),
and can’t even find the existential link between Spiderman and Keirkegaard.
Why do I still not know how
To spell
“Kierkegaard”?
(‘i’ before ‘e’, except after ‘c’.
What a selfish letter, ‘I’!
I think I remember Princess Mia talking about the letter ‘I’…
what was her conclusion?
Selflessness,
right!)
Selflessness…
Maybe that’s the problem.
Perhaps I spend all my time creating for myself – or trying to.
I create for recognition: create for a product (not the multiplied kind, Sir Engineer), a
grade, a glance from a boy
– perhaps I should set my sights on a man – a job, but never
JOY.
The last time I created selflessly, it was for someone else’s joy:
and it was… glorious.
Pie!
Not the 3.1415, limit-does-not-exist, fail-your-next-exam, determine-the-sine-wave-
period Pi, but P.I.E.
Pie. I made a pie.
I celebrated the simple joy of sharing and smiling. And sharing a smile –
literally, the slice we shared was smile-shaped!
Perhaps I was wrong, earlier.
(Yes, get off on that admission of past wrong,
Mr. I-Am-The-Best, Math Guy! You and Pico should talk.)
Fine.
I was wrong
(note the weak be-verb to emphasize my error!)
Perhaps God created, in one brief day, his paradoxical human creation
to be the greatest and the least
depending on their own individual
DECISIONS
to create.
(What a thesis that would make if creative analysis was allowed!)
DECISIONS
take us different directions.
Direction? Synonymous with “Way!”
God’s way.
“Way” rhymes with “day!”
That’s the word I was missing! Thank you, Lord!
Now, I think it’s time for this mop-top to
create
through something greater than hairbrush!
Perhaps a Rock will do.
KEBU 