Crayons

In Ha Jin’s A Free Life, the Chinese-born novelist writes about the difference between being an immigrant and being an exile or expatriate. He also observes that art requires leisure. Those two pieces of this fine novel reminded me of some things about living in Point Roberts and Roberts Creek. Many current residents of both places have come as retirees and have come from large cities, just as we did. We are definitely not exiles nor expatriates but we, too, are in some ways immigrants to a new way of life that we do not altogether understand, nor indeed can we altogether understand it. The tendency, of course, for Ha Jin’s characters as well as for those of us who have immigrated to small places like Point Roberts, is to try to understand the new place in terms of the old place and, at the same time, to try to make it the opposite of the old place. First we consider why there are not more of the amenities that we were used to in our old lives. Later, we may think about how we can and perhaps must become someone quite different from our prior self.

I considered changing my name when I first moved here. Never a big fan of ‘Judy,’ I found I was not a bigger fan of something else. Binker Wooten Wilson had a certain je ne sais quoi, but it worked only if all three parts were used, and that seemed more than I’d be able to expect. So, my antique name glided into this new life right along with me. Other things did change, though. I had spent my entire adult life as a writer, so I became an artist. If Art requires Leisure, as Ha Jin says, it may be equally true that Leisure begets Art. With job done and children off on their adult lives, there was all the leisure in the world. If you haven’t learned to keep house for two adults in about 30 minutes per day, including some cooking, you weren’t paying attention. So then there are the other 15.5 hours to consider.

I decided to focus on what I could see, and sixteen years of acute focus on the art of quilting has taught me a great many things, one of them being that the visual arts are more like the literary arts than I would ever have thought. The second is that a little bit of talent and a large amount of focused work will get you a long ways. I’m not the only retiree to find this out, of course. Artists of all kind are thick on the ground in both these places. The artist-retirees have, in common, leisure, a habit of focused work, and relatively little interest in what previously they understood as ‘success.’

They have something else in common, too. All of them that I’ve talked to hear, sooner or later, a friend, relative, or acquaintance say, ‘You’re so talented! I’m not creative at all.’ Sometimes these are reversed: ‘You’re so creative; I’m not talented at all!’ It’s a world-class conversation stopper. What is one to say? ‘Yes, I am and no, you’re not.’ Or, ‘No, I’m not, and yes, you are?’ I’ve learned to say something like, ‘Well, I work very hard at it,’ and just let it go.

But I think there’s a better way to say it: Creativity is like a seed. If it sits around in a seed package, nothing is going to happen to it. If it's planted, and gets some water and some warmth, it’s likely to start growing. If it’s in the wrong kind of soil or other external conditions are too harsh, it will die or just struggle along, inadequately. If it’s well nurtured and the conditions are made right for its development over a long period time, it will bloom well and beautifully. If it’s neglected, or nourished only fitfully, it won’t. The retirees with leisure who are working hard to foster that seed: well that’s one choice. There are lots of other choices in life that won’t get that seed to flourish, but that will allow something else to happen. It’s choice and focus, I think, at this point.

Which brings me to crayons. Yesterday, a friend sent me an interesting link to a recycle site. Many things there that I hadn’t thought about recycling. My favorite one, though, was crayons. If you’ve got crayons around that you have no use for, you can send them to this woman and she will generate new crayons from them and give them to those who need crayons, whoever that may be. Or, if you’ve been thinking about how to get that seed of talent and creativity to flourish, you can just take the crayons out and use them yourself.