Ideas Like Fireflies

“Set your ideas into the wild.” It was just a sentence fragment I read on a blog today, but now, hours later, it still resonates. What a wonderful image–taking your ideas and setting them free against an autumn sky, to soar away.

The memory of fireflies, Ink on paper. © Quinn McDonald

You lose control over them, but you never really were in control of your ideas. You just kept them, like fireflies in a jar,  until you had filled your eyes with wonder, and then you let them go, because they weren’t really yours to begin with.  But you never forgot the glow in the dark and the churn of comfort and power you got from opening that jar and having the fireflies crawl to the rim, lift their wings and blink up into the grassy-smelling dark night.

Our ideas are ours to nourish, marvel over, and set free into the wild. You write a book, you teach a class and your ideas float across space and time, to be caught, transformed and set free again, in different spaces and different times. You may not even recognize it when it comes back, but as it passes you on the street, dressed in a suit and formal with design, you’ll smell a hint of summer grass and catch a slight wink of light, and the memory will still be there.

The experience of recognition, the experience of power and joy, that makes setting free your ideas all the more worthwhile.

–Quinn McDonald has a jar of ideas on her desk. She remembers it once held fireflies.

Ideas: Set Free Into the Wild

“Set your ideas into the wild.” It was just a sentence fragment I read on a blog today, but now, hours later, it still resonates. What a wonderful image–taking your ideas and setting them free against an autumn sky, to soar away.

The memory of fireflies, Ink on paper. © Quinn McDonald

You lose control over them, but you never really were in control of your ideas. You just kept them, like fireflies in a jar,  until you had filled your eyes with wonder, and then you let them go, because they weren’t really yours to begin with.  But you never forgot the glow in the dark and the churn of comfort and power you got from opening that jar and having the fireflies crawl to the rim, lift their wings and blink up into the grassy-smelling dark of night.

Our ideas are ours to nourish, marvel over, and set free into the wild. You write a book, you teach a class and your ideas float across space and time, to be caught, transformed and set free again, in different shapes and textures. You may not even recognize it when it comes back, but as it passes you on the street, dressed in a suit and formal with design, you’ll smell a hint of summer grass and catch a slight wink of light, and the memory will still be there.

The experience of recognition, the experience of power and joy, that makes setting free your ideas all the more worthwhile.

–Quinn McDonald has a jar of ideas on her desk. She remembers it once held fireflies.

Fiddleheads and Fireflies

The desert is a lovely thing, a land alive with adaptable creatures and plants. A landscape of color and vibrancy I’ve seen no place else.

I love living here, but there are a few things that I miss more than I can describe. The tender green of a fiddlehead fern as it unfolds in the spring, always close to running water. The smell of damp spring smells like the first day of Creation. Or at least, the way I imagine it.

Image from http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/120294 via lilidonnelly.com

Years ago, I lived in rural Maryland. Two apple trees grew in the yard. They were old, and had never been trimmed. We scheduled a trimming, and the men came while I was gone. When I came back, the stumps of trees greeted me. They look struck by lightning, and in the February gloom, I sat on the porch and cried.

But the men who pruned them knew what they were doing. A few weeks’ later the trees were shot through with new green branches, all pushing out apple-green leaves, tiny at first, then unfurling to grass-green leaves the size of playing cards.

One spring night it rained. Fireflies filled the trees. They looked like tiny Christmas lights, blinking in the dark. I dreamed about it a few nights ago, and I remember that I miss fireflies. We don’t have them here, and it makes me miss them more.

–Quinn McDonald moved from the East Coast to the Sonoran Desert in 2008. She’s a writer and a life- and creativity coach.