by Joe Scuderi on November 22, 2010
I remember my Mom or my Grandmom saying it to me when I was a little kid: ‘Oh, you’re just making that up, you’re telling stories!’ Maybe they were amused. They weren’t necessarily angry at me. But a phrase like ‘You’re a little storyteller!’ might mean that it’s time for you to scoot, to run outside and get out from under their feet, make yourself scarce and stop pestering them. Of course once you got older you might turn those gifts of the imagination towards more utilitarian ends. Such as, to help get what you want in a more devious way. With not such an innocent spin. Perhaps a little more forethought or planning going into the fabrication. In which case, now, the response, if caught in the act, might not be amusement.
But put all that aside for the moment. When I look back on my childhood and really make the effort to see things as I saw them then, to really try and feel what it was like, and in some small way recapture that feeling, then when I search out for the best times in those times long gone by, it has to be books, and to a smaller extent movies… because movies were never as involved, generally, I mean they were so short compared to a good long book. And what was it about that good long book? It was the other world, the new world, the imaginative world into which you stepped when you opened those pages. And it was a double gift. The gift, firstly, from the author, but also it was your own gift, it was your own imagination, all those powers which belonged to you, and which made you able to recreate what the author had in the first place created.
It was the imagination. That was always the best thing. The world-tranforming thing. And how easy it is to lose it! Oh, we get older, and the world comes barreling in and busting down the doors, and we surrender our gifts, or we let them escape, just fly out the window, and we forget -yes we do!- just how important, how wonderful, the imagination is to us. We forget. What a loss it is. Maybe, if we’re lucky, somewhere farther down the road we remember or we figure out what we lost, and then we make the concerted attempt to regain it. And all our friends, all the creators, the artists and authors and musicians, all these friends help us in our quest. And yet, finally, they can only help us, but only we -each of us- can do for ourselves. It’s our own creation, it’s the responsibility, and the will, to create, to bring forth from the imagination and let those creatures who already, in potential, inhabit our imagination, step out from the shadows and take up the burden of life for all to see… that’s the thing.
There’s nothing better, nothing better. The imagination is the key. The word should be capitalized, when used in this way. The Imagination. Oh, how I love it! And to create, to bring these things into the world, and then to have others share them with you, to discover they share some of your wonder and your love of these things… well, I guess that’s really the best thing of all. It’s like the old Zen koan, if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? My answer is no, it doesnt. And I take it one step further, I say if no one’s there to hear it fall, well, heck… it doesnt even fall in the first place.
by Joe Scuderi on November 17, 2010
Last night was the night. Big winds came, you heard them out there, in the background while you slept. And then you poke your head out in the morning, and the back deck is covered, just covered with the leaves that came down from the big sugar maple. When I was driving on Sunday, looking at all the trees still heavy with big batches of bright yellow leaves, I knew it wouldnt be long until the winds came, and I was right, because sure enough they arrived, and now all the trees are basically stripped bare, and only a few die hard leaves are hanging on. And that’s how I measure Winter’s arrival. When the winds come, all at once, on one fateful day or night, and the color’s all gone, and Autumn’s gone, and now it’s Winter’s long haul.
But Winter’s okay, dont get me wrong. For some reason, this Fall, I had a lot of thoughts about the long sleep which is Winter, and about how the Earth and its creatures get renewed by that long sleep which is Winter, and that if you didnt have that time of shutting down and renewing then things couldnt get properly reborn in the Spring, and everything would be on some kind of hell bent for leather treadmill or merry go round that would sooner or later self destruct. So Winter’s all right. It only gets really tough around February, when you start to ache for green and soft breezes, and your bones are weary of pulling in and shutting down and covering up, and you just want to throw the sheets off of everything and slam open the windows.
But Winter’s a good thing, especially in the beginning. You have all the holidays, the friends and the food and the drinking, and I think deep in our hearts most of us lament the loss of the village agricultural ways of the days of yore, where once the harvest came in, and you did all your due diligence regarding firewood and patching the roof and plugging up leaks and stashing hay for the animals, that then you had a bunch of months off during which time you yourself could renew just like the Earth is doing under your feet and all around you. A long good sleep, a slow motion walk through cold landscapes, when you travel from one warm door to the next, and pile up the covers, and forget about things for a while, swim down into your dreams.
Well, those are the thoughts that seeing these new piles of leaves bring to me. I’ll tell you one thing I cant stand, and that’s people going out there and raking up all the leaves and then putting them into bags for the trucks to haul away. At least in the old days we burned them, and there was a certain dignity in that, I mean a dignity accorded to the Earth and her trees and their leaves. But sweep everything bare? All that does is highlight the awful and scary side of Winter, how Winter must be if you dont have firewood and your roof has holes and there’s no covers on your beds and no apples and potatoes in barrels in your root cellar. It’s why snow is so great, because it draws that wonderful white blanket over all its sleeping creatures. But to haul away the leaves… I find it frightening, and unhappy, and a sign that people dont know what they’re doing. I’ll tell you this much… on this little one acre property we have on which our house sits, nobody will be raking leaves and stuffing them into bags. I guarantee you that.
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