all the trouble began when my high school english teacher, the gay one with peroxided hair who'd wrap himself in the window curtains and declaim romeo and james, told me, this boy has imagination. he made it seem like such a great thing. from then on i was hooked on writing, art, day-dreaming, and looking out the window, training for my future lookout job.
today, having almost piddled away sixty-years in the pursuit of creativity, i admit, i've no regrets. after all the adventures pursuing the life of a poet, i can sit quietly and calmly in my room, assessing the worth of my teacher's statement. okay, let me justify it, everything we have comes from somebody having thought it up. i do use the word 'thought' with a pinch of salt, considering i mean the floating memories, accidental collisions, and insufferable lessons in school brought about the fork, pornography, and the dentist's chair. who among the angels could have guessed?
we've been called the tool-making animal. i don't think i've ever created anything that useful in my life, except i've put the given tools like the pencil, photoshop, and the shoe to good use. true, dreaming up a poem is not like inventing the spoon, yet it stirs the up the muddy waters of the brain so gold can be detected in the pan. i'll say it again, without the imagination we'd be rabbits, hiding in holes, creating as many offspring as possible to defeat wolves and bad weather. using our cosmic quality, we've air-conditioning instead, which i can appreciate as the temperature climbs with the coming of summer.
i wonder if we shouldn't drop the saying, don't get carried away with confabulations from the ancient adages of wisdom? if little kids didn't dream and old folks didn't dodder, what would be left?
perhaps scenes like these from the fear of clowns: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/clowns
Memory is incomplete experience. j. krishnamurti
