Some Contemplative Writing students have spoken about the contemplative writing process as a "river of words" or a freeing of the writing processes. Contemplation is the mental easing of something that often results in the release of more inner workings than initially expected. I find when writing becomes less of a course of nature for me, painting and letting out imagery and color can itself ease up the processes of writing. These past few years I have been deeply studying and practicing meditation, which shares something with contemplation. There is a part of meditation involving physical stillness that comes to mind. In some meditation processes, nonjudgmental concentration is placed on something basic like the breath while much of the rest of what is being done can just be simply sitting quietly. Itches inevitably occur, or uncomfortable feelings that might be eased by adjusting the leg or sitting differently. Holding still through this discomfort can benefit the meditative process by building neurological synapses that strengthen willpower against things like impulses. You can learn more about this in The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. The reason I mention stillness and the urge to ease it is because “easing” is really my main subject here. Writing and painting are expression and with that they are movement, and there is a place for that, and arguably that is the whole point of a Contemplative Writing experience. When I took my Contemplative Writing course, I was struck by the gaps in the professor's teaching verbosity, as she expressed instruction to the class, I always was impressed by the manner in which she orated with moments to pause in silence.

In the course of my last few days of creativity, there has been an interplay between my thoughts, periods of rest, moments of expressive painting, and writing. I have only shared some of this with you so far, the cat and bird painting and the three sequential poems about something that happened to me. But I think it would do a disservice to the disclosure of how I created these things to neglect to tell the full story. The start of these pieces was not a touch of paint to a brush tip or a pen on a pad, it was what went on in me in thought and feelings. You have to give yourself the liberty of being the most important thing. Just know art and poetry are the opposite of narcissism. The start of this cycle of creating is sometimes a vague thing to pinpoint, but this time I can think of an exact moment. I was undergoing deep contemplation in a strange point of time in the course of a day. In fact, I had been sound asleep for hours. It was the middle of the night, and I came to awareness that I was awake only after this occurred. I do not talk to enough people about midnight occurrences to know if this is common. Anyway, what it was that I realized was that fear I was feeling about the next leg of my life was not a necessary motivating force. I realized I can be motivated by anything, so I decided to be motivated by love. (Then later I googled my thoughts and realized John Lennon has similar ideas.)

So it has been a few months before I have taken out the paints but something in me needed the paints soon after this occurrence, and I don't know if it more realistic to say the root cause was thoughts or feelings. Who knows the answer to that. It was a moment of thoughts and feelings. I guess feelings came and then thoughts and then more feelings. So I got an idea that I would do some abstract conceptual paintings about fear and love on post it notes without sticky backs as my low budget paper. Sometimes I enjoy working on a small piece of paper because it takes less work to finish, and often my artistic depictions are just expressive dashes, rather than strategically planned instrumentations. So my expression was abstract at first, paint that just was eager to get chosen and splashes of it. A turquoise cloud of "fear"....