Weaving The Dream

For several years in the spring, an area of unidentified plants sprouted and grew in our back yard.  They didn’t seem to blossom so, having no idea what they were, my husband cut them down with the first mowing of the yard.

But then, a couple of years ago, my husband and I went out to dinner at our small local restaurant.  The menu noted that it was ramps season and then listed several specials for the week featuring ramps.  I decided to give one of the dishes a try.

After the waitress set the artfully prepared plate before me, I looked at the leaves and said, “Bob, look!  Aren’t these the same leaves that are growing in our yard?”

After consuming the dish with its pungent, yet earthy taste, we came home and hurried to the back yard.  Yes, ramps were running riotous in our backyard!  Hurray!

What are ramps?  Wild leeks that grow in places like Quebec and West Virginia and here in New York. Some places hold festivals to celebrate this plant with its unusual flavor combination of onion and garlic. Ramps may be short for rampions, which are native to England and other parts of Europe, (though somewhat different there) and play a central role in the story of Rapunzel.

Remember?  It’s the theft of those rampions from the witch’s garden that forces Rapunzel’s parents to give her up to the witch where she is then imprisoned in a tower with no door.  And even the witch has to use Rapunzel’s long hair to get into the tower. In fact, the name Rapunzel supposedly derives from the Latin name for rampion, Rapunculus.

To me, the ramps definitely have their own kind of magic, growing wild in the spring, sending up those leaves with their red stems for several weeks and then seeming to disappear.  Because they grow wild, you have to look carefully to find them.  And, if you aren’t paying attention, you can miss them altogether and miss an earthily delightful addition to your diet.

Just as we can sometimes miss the seasoning and magic of the wild things that sprout up in our writing or other creative project.  We can be so focused on our vision for that book, or painting—how we imagine it should look—that we enthusiastically weed out and mow down anything that doesn’t seem to belong or, perhaps worse, we fail to recognize the freely offered wild and tasty things that spring up along the way.

Yet, sometimes, it is precisely those magical wild things that can add a flavorful seasoning and significance to our writing or creative project.

True, we don’t want to harvest them all.  If we did that there would be none for the next time.  Nor do we want to add so much of that wild seasoning that we overpower our work.  But a careful selection, a willingness to expand our creative diet and to experiment could result in an expressive dish that is uniquely ours.

Last night, my husband and I had grilled salmon, sweet potato fries, and ramps sautéed in butter.  Yummmm!

Yes, it’s spring.  Are you harvesting your creative rampions?

Last weekend, my husband and I watched a movie my aunt recommended to me, “You Kill Me.”  Ben Kingsley stars as a Polish alcoholic hitman from Buffalo whose drinking inevitably ends up causing him problems “on the job.”  The mob sends him to San Francisco to dry out, with interesting consequences for everyone.

In the opening scene, it is winter in Buffalo (i.e. snow up to your …) and Kingsley’s character, Frank, is in his kitchen drinking from a bottle of vodka that he puts down long enough to put on a coat and hat.  He picks the bottle up, opens his front door, steps outside, takes a slug or two from the bottle, caps it, looks carefully, and then tosses the capped bottle down the steps into the snow. 

Frank shovels down the steps until he gets to the bottle, picks it up, uncaps it and takes a few more slugs, caps the bottle, and then tosses it farther along the walk.  He shovels more snow until he once again arrives at the bottle and then repeats the process all over again.

Isn’t that a great image or metaphor for the power of motivation?

Frank knew himself well enough to realize that if he was going to get all that snow shoveled, he needed motivation.  Granted the motivation was an addiction, but because he wanted that vodka badly enough, he shoveled quickly and efficiently to get to it, several times over.

Motivation is important for creativity.  How badly do I want to get my books written?  If I want to write—and sell—a book, then I have to be willing to shovel the snow, to do the work to make it happen.  Then I can drink in (don’t moan, it’s a good pun) the feeling of achievement and success.

Whether it means doing research, planning story structure, or ultimately, sitting down and putting one word after another, I have to do the work.  I have to be willing to dig in and pick up shovelful after shovelful of words.  A writing friend of mine recently commented to me on how much fun it is to come up with the idea and storyline for a novel, but how much work, how even painful it is to sit down and actually write the story.  Yes, it can be backbreaking, painful, exhausting work.

But how badly do I want it?  How badly do you?  If you want to see that story in print, hear that composition performed by an orchestra, see that landscape hanging on the wall, you have to want it enough, desire it enough with your whole self to do the work.

The scene also reminds us that it is a good idea to reward ourselves along the path of our hard work.  The creative project can require weeks, months, or even years of our creative time and energy before its completion, so treating ourselves along the way to some of the things that nourish our creativity can keep us going.  You know—like dark chocolate, a hot bath, reading a good book, watching a darkly humorous movie like “You Kill Me,” going for a walk—little rewards, little sips here and there, to keep us going.

So plan some rewards along the way, remind yourself how badly you want to see that completed project, and start shoveling.  And tell me, what keeps you motivated?

And while you are doing that, I am going to go see if I can get my husband to massage my back!