Being creative in a creative world
seed saving, pattern spotting, and color matching***
April 6, 2025
The germination from seed to plant is an act of creation quite varied, at times misunderstood, and layered in complexity. A fascinating analogy is how we unfold, grow, and express the truth of who we are. I imagine the energy which resides in the seed is like the force upon which the breath rides. Powerful. Perpetual. Expanding and contracting in a never-ending state of consciousness.
There may be a word for this, but it escapes me. Physicists may have a term. Tell me, do you know? What comes to mind is ignition, spark, intelligence, chaos, or cohesion. However it’s indescribably more than any one word. What is the beat that happens just prior to the spark, setting all things off, a chain reaction in both the seed and body? That force which is fueled by pure intelligence and potentially malleable by the slightest environmental nuance. And at which point a dormant series of genetic code unfurls into becoming its essence.
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Being creative, as the word infers, is related to creation. It’s inherent in everyone and everything. For me, I find that being outside, and often, has the potential to amplify creativity, if only for the fact that I’m commingling with a vast network teaming with life. Everything is pulsating from one iteration to the next, evolutionarily tangential. How the boundaries of interior and exterior blur can be while gazing through a picture window, tending a small garden, home cooking, employing architecturally savvy designs to be in harmony with the locale. What is your vernacular?
My hypothesis is that, when we truly know and experience this integration, we may know ourselves as a seed. As a result, taking care of Nature seems like a no-brainer. We give a damn. We curb the assault. We are one amidst many. For without Nature life would come to a screeching terribly halt. Unfortunately the very model of capitalism provides a kind of immunity from the alternative. Leaving many either ennui or anxious or too distracted to get outside in order to harmonize with the elements and slow down.
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Do you ever find it exhausting, borderline insulting, that “our fears and anxieties are regularly exploited by the mainstream advertising industry to feed the capitalist system.”*
Deep connection to self and source, to others, ritual, community—anything that may cultivate joy rivals negativity bias. It neutralizes fear and anxiety with love. So the question becomes how can being replace buying? How can stewardship and integrity with the land replace the relentless need for more? How do we know when enough is enough?
Cultivating a creative force
I find that writing and editing are not that different from working in the garden. It is all alive and reactive. There will be both toil and rest, revelation and familiarity, coercion and spontaneity.
To keep my mind curious I often play with the following** practices. They help me keep an explorer's mind, observing myself and my surroundings in a new, neutral, or different way.
Creative methods for seeding a new kind of living
Pattern spotting
Consciously noticing or actively looking for patterns no matter how random or abstract. I will often do this while gazing into the limbs of the mulberry tree outside my office window. The shadows cast patterns, the wind changes how the light pours through, the leaves will move, the colors through similar make different patterns.
Color identifying
Practice identifying color at first glance. There may be more than you realize. I love this practice and find it a soothing practice to scan and notice without having to ‘discern’ or ‘figure out’. Isn’t it funny how limiting the word green is to describe a forest.
Matching
Look out for objects, forms, shapes, anything. . .which visually match each other but are functionally completely different. The ponderosa pine which stands close to the wooden electric pole. The garden gate which is outlined with honeysuckle and the backdoor.
Remember we live in a container of creativity where perception and perspective are not the same. It’s hard to describe, but somewhere in the process of contemplation you may experience a momentary flash of insight. What ideas arise within you? Do you notice overlaps in how seemingly different things behave in similar ways? What concepts in design and nature exist in multiple art forms or ways of being?
Yours, Erin
*Ruby Warrington Sober Curious The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol (New York: Harper One 2019) p133
**Inspired by the lovely work of Philippa Stanton
***This essay has been updated and revised. Originally posted June 2024.