Daydream Believer

I'm just not creative... This is something that I hear all too frequently. It's usually accompanied by a slow puzzled head shake and a glazed look at whatever creative thing I'm doing. It's like they're staring at that thing and wondering why they can't think of things like that. In my consulting work a similar reaction comes when the client hears a course design and asks, "How do you come up with this stuff?"

The simple answer is daydreaming.

I am and always have been an unapologetic daydreamer. For evidence of this see my writer's confession. At my client's office it may seem like I'm just playing or socializing or surfing the internet, but there is always a purpose to what I'm doing. I'm letting my mind go and eventually it will go to the solution that I'm looking for.

Unfortunately, we are conditioned not to daydream. In school we're told that it's bad, unless we're lucky enough to have a teacher who recognizes it for what it is. In adulthood we have responsibilities like jobs and kids that require our focus. On top of that we now have media content (social or otherwise) at our fingertips with which to occupy ourselves. Our natural inclination to daydream gets shut down or pre-empted by life and noise. But we should never underestimate the power of daydreaming.

Now that my training work has increased, I have less time to devote to daydreaming than I did when I was at home with the kids. So I have been seeking ways to promote daydreaming at the appropriate times. Triggers to shut the world off and set my mind flying.

Music is a method that has worked wonders for me when it comes to fiction. I associate certain songs or styles of music with certain characters or situations and use them to put myself in the right mindset. For general purpose daydreaming I try to find classical music to fit the mood of what I'm writing, such as Beethoven for soaring emotions, Grieg for action or Chopin for working through plot questions. These are good for certain characters and mood, but sometimes even with headphones and repetition these triggers have a hard time shutting off the internal noise of to do lists, chores and general worries.

I have also found that "meditative doodling" or Zentangling as some folks call it is a great way to quiet the noise and spark daydreaming. Zentangling is a method of pen and ink drawing that is focused on weaving together shapes and repeated patterns within a defined drawing space usually just a few inches square. It starts with a simple "string" that gives the shapes the patterns will follow. Choosing which pattern fills each shape and how they fit together forces you to make quick creative choices. It's like a jumpstart for the creative process. While the repetition of the patterns leaves room for your thoughts to wander. It's a very relaxing experience and can get your creative juices flowing, like yoga for your brain.

In addition to sparking those creative juices, you end with a pretty drawing. So, you still have that sense of accomplishment even if what you were thinking about while you were drawing is an ongoing project. I have been using this method over the past few weeks to try to wrap my brain around some of the revisions in The River Maiden with great success.

Here are a couple drawings that I've done while thinking about what will happen next to Dermot and Sarah.

If you would like to learn more about Zentangling you can check out Zentangle.com for more info.

You can also see some more examples from people better at it than I am on my Pinterest board.

If you're interested in reading more about daydreaming and how it can be a powerful thing, check out this article from Psychology Today.

My love letter to a hunk of rust

I had planned to write a blog post about "Reminder" #2 from Strunk & White's An Approach to Style in which they say to "Write in a way that comes naturally." But I've got something else on my mind that would likely make my approach to that topic forced and unnatural. It's been weighing on my mind since I saw it yesterday morning, and I just have to vent about it. My Instagram followers (I'm "mrstoddard". Feel free to follow) are by now familiar with my love of crumbling, dilapidated, abandoned things. There is just something so evocative to me about an abandoned house or car that makes me want to speculate on why it's in such a state and who lived there or used it in its prime. These sort of daydreams are why as a child I loved long road trips and never minded just sitting in the back seat and watching the world through the window. I still love that.

One of the few things to love about where I live now is that it is rural and crisscrossed with narrow back roads that have been here much longer than the few highways that cut through the county. I would much rather take these back roads or even the near-mythical US Rt 1 to get where I'm going than get on I-95 and hurtle north or south at seventy plus miles an hour seeing nothing but trees and bridges.

So, my Instagram feed and my hard drive at home are full of pictures of the things I've seen on my back road rambles. There are houses being reclaimed by forests, abandoned furniture, bridges that no one uses anymore, and chimneys without houses attached. It was on one of these rambles that I came across Michaels Rd. This road is just barely two lanes wide and winds itself through tree farms and rolling hills. It goes from having a full canopy of trees to more open areas populated by a mix of well-cared-for homes and houses that have seen better days. For a nature/decay hound like me, it's paradise.

About halfway between the tree farm and where Michaels Rd runs into the slightly wider Bath Rd is a section of road about 100 yards long that is so full of delicious decay that I have on occasion pulled over and walked around taking pictures. There is an abandoned garage with a truck and farm equipment under a lean-to. Just past the garage is an abandoned bus parked neatly next to a stand of trees that shade it from view unless you know what you're looking for. There is also a rusting abandoned trailer barely visible that looks so plain and narrow that even in its heyday must have been a dismal place to live. On the opposite shoulder about thirty feet away sits an abandoned armchair. It's nothing special, a contemporary style wide cushiony chair with soft arms. If I saw it in the lobby of hotel, I would probably think it was outdated, but comfortable. Except it's not in the lobby of a hotel, it's in the grass by the roadside, so it's upholstery is stained with mildew and the filth that comes off people's cars or creeps up from the ground.

Just past the chair surrounded by high grass, is an abandoned car so close to the trees that it looks as if whoever parked it there had hoped that it would go unnoticed. The first time I drove by it, it reminded me so much of my granddad's '79 Nova that I had to stop and snap a picture. It was on a later trip that I came back with no children and got out to walk over to the car for a closer look. That was when I saw it. Downhill where the ground fell away from the shoulder surrounded by pine trees and high weeds was a car. I have no idea what kind of car it is I'm sure some car person reading this can probably identify it, but it's one of the those beautiful art deco style cars from the late 1940's with the smooth sweeping lines. The doors were gone and the trunk was askew, but beyond that it appeared to be intact. It wasn't wrecked or on blocks or hidden under a tarp or lean-to.    To my daydreamer's eye, it almost looked as if someone as enchanted with the countryside as I am had just pulled off the road to enjoy a few quiet moments under the pines and left it there.

My mind immediately began creating scenarios to explain this beautiful car in the woods. First, it was just that someone had pulled into the trees to enjoy their beauty. Maybe they had gotten out and walked through the woods. That area is full of wetlands and black bears. Perhaps the car's owner had wandered off and gotten mired in a swamp or attacked by a bear. On a more romantic note, maybe the car was pulled off the road to that spot for a lover's tryst. It was just far enough off the road that it wouldn't be visible to the average passing driver. Maybe they argued, and one left the other forever nursing a broken heart under the pines. Maybe another jealous lover had come upon them and done away with them removing their bodies, but leaving the car and whatever evidence it held to rot in the forest. My mind created pictures of people in post-war dress getting in and out of the car, leaning against the side, looking under the hood, dancing to Glenn Miller under the trees in the beams of the headlights.

Over the months that have followed my discovery of the rust bucket, I have taken pictures of it surrounded by fallen autumn leaves, covered in a blanket of snow, and amid the impossible green of spring weeds that flourish in our fertile central Virginia soil.    It's been the wallpaper on my iPad since I first spotted it. I love daydreaming about this car.

So yesterday I was tooling along down Michaels Rd. T was in the seat behind me working on her latest heavy metal hit on Garage Band on her iPod. I came around the turn past the garage and I was gobsmacked to find my favorite rust bucket suddenly sitting just inches from the pavement on the shoulder. I hit the brakes and pulled to a stop behind it, and just sat there.  My favorite pile of roadside detritus was no longer in its little space under the shade of the pines, but sitting in the stark sunlight where everyone driving by could see it in its naked, decayed state. Part of me wanted to cover it up with a blanket to keep away prying eyes. Another part wanted to go home and get a better camera so I could poke around through all its nooks and crannies documenting every rusty worn out inch and angle.

It suffered for the move too. The rear window that had been mostly intact now sat at a right angle to its frame. The front seat was ripped and the stuffing hanging out. I could also see what had previously been hidden by a tree trunk. The hood was gone and so too it seemed was the engine. This was possibly the most heart-wrenching revelation for me. Suddenly all my scenarios of how the car got into the woods were shot out of the air. No one could have driven it there with no engine. Suddenly, it went from a wonderfully evocative rotting car corpse to just another piece of roadside junk.

No doubt the owner of the land on which my rust bucket was parked is the one who moved it, and they're naturally within their rights. Still, I can't help feeling like they've robbed me. They've taken a favorite item from the virtual cork board of my imagination and dropped it on the side of the road like so much trash.  And no matter how I love taking shots of roadside trash (and I do), I couldn't help feeling crushed.

As a rule, I don't get out to take pictures when T is in the car, so I pulled around and snapped a few shots through my window making a mental note to come back this weekend when the kids go to visit my parents. Hopefully, it will still be there.

A couple of Updates to this post: First, I'm sorry to say that when I went back on Saturday without child in tow to try to take more pictures, the car was gone. Likewise the other car that reminded me of my Grandad's Nova was also gone. It appears that whoever owns that land is in fact cleaning it up.

Second, after perusing photos of cars all over the internet from that era, I can just about confirm that this is a 1940 Packard 110 Touring Sedan. Here's a link to an ebay auction for one that shows some good photos for comparison. In case you're unable to look at the auction, here is also a link to a photo gallery of Packards from the 40's. It doesn't have the 110, but it does have some pictures of the similar but slightly larger 120.  However, this is a match made by my untutored eye, so if you happen to be an expert in old cars and you think I'm wrong, please feel free to set me straight.

I have a confession to make

And I hope you won't take this the wrong way. I'm only half listening to you. It's not that I don't care about you, in fact I probably care more than the next person. But the fact is that while you're talking to me about; the weather, your job or your toddler's propensity for sorting his toy cars according to color, in my head is a whole other world. There a broad cast of characters is falling in love, catching a serial killer, or searching for the Holy Grail. They have lives and loves and histories that rival any of ours. This goes far beyond mere daydreaming. So if I seem a bit distant or respond in an awkward way, it's only because I'm caught up in the epic struggles going on in my head.

It's been this way for as long as I can remember. My parents will tell you stories of the whole worlds that I would make up as a child before I ever learned to read and write. I could shut myself in my room for ages and live out sagas of my own making.  I was and still am perfectly happy being alone. In fact, sometimes I crave it.

My AP History teacher in high school, upon hearing another teacher complain about me not paying attention in class was heard to say, "Well, Meredith has her own agenda." Mr. Ridgeway got it. He knew that even though I was sitting in his class and part of my brain was listening another part was in another world. He could handle the fact that on my desk was one notebook for taking notes and another for writing. Fortunately, I have run into a few people in my life who do get it. I treasure those people and occasionally give them my full attention. The part that was in class, incidentally kicked ass on the AP exam and got college credit for American History. Likewise the part of me that was present in my college classes made the Dean's List. Still, there is always that part of me that is in a cabin in the mountains, on a ship crossing the ocean, in Scotland/Mexico/Peru.

So, it's not that I don't like you or that I'm not listening, it's just that the people in my head are talking too, and sometimes they drown you out.