Oh, That Rug!

When you travel a lot (and I do), hotel rugs, wallpaper and art become interesting. Also, a great way to know that you left one city and are in another.

Hotel rug, blooming happily away.

This rug, with huge florals, is compelling. I wouldn’t want it in my house, but for a hotel rug, it’s cheerful, hides dirt and doesn’t show wear. It’s also nice that the pattern doesn’t repeat. Since the even-numbered doors aren’t numbered where you can see them from the elevator exit, it helps to remember which flower is yours!

The sadder news is that I have stayed in three of this brand of hotel and I have had the same art in every room. Every. Room.

–Quinn McDonald is a corporate trainer who specializes in writing and creative problem solving.

 

Lawn Ornament as Art

Here in the desert, we often don’t plant lawns. They get shriveled by May, and need too  much water. We use rocks instead.

This lawn had a big chunk of brown glass. I’ve never seen such a large piece of glass. (About the size of a shoebox.) But the sun was at the perfect angle. The glass looked as if it were on fire.

Sometimes is just a pile of rocks, sometimes its a piece of art. Up to you, always.

—Quinn McDonald is writing a book about the invisible, visible world. She is a writer and creativity coach.

The Beauty of Destruction

Building, making, and creating are wonderful. But there is also great beauty in things that are old, damaged, or worn. Wabi sabi is the Japanese phrase for honoring the worn, the old, the damaged.  I’ve had a long-lived love affair with wabi sabi.

A few days ago, Phoenix had a hard freeze and stucco’d walls will often pop off the stucco. This wall is on the way there. I found the shadow work on it really beautiful.

You can see the lifted stucco as well as the line where the bricks are joined. It forms a map of its experiences, just as the lines on your face tell your story, too.

–Quinn McDonald is writing a book on the Invisible, Visible World–seeing things in new ways with fresh eyes.

Go For Fresh

By 4:00 p.m. I was hungry. Dinner is later these days, we aren’t both home until about 7:00 p.m. But by later in the afternoon, even with a good lunch, I’m  sure I will waste away without a snack. But it has to be healthy, too.  I headed for the fridge for my usual snack–a red pepper. Sometimes it gets a dab of peanut butter, sometimes a smear of soft cheese. Other times, just plain. A sweet red pepper is a perfect thing.

As I reached into the crisper drawer, I noticed a wrinkled pepper, older, slowly exhaling its sweet aroma and crunchy texture in exchange for wrinkles shooting across its skin.

Automatically, I reach for the sadder pepper. Training from long ago. In my family, we were not allowed to eat the fresh, new, crisp fruit. No, we were to eat the older, mushy fruit or vegetable first. That way, nothing went to waste. We did not waste in our house. I know, I know, but you didn’t know my parents and how close they had lived to starvation for years. Waste was not a choice, it was a way to stay alive. A habit once learned is hard to break.

The result? We rarely ate tasty, just-picked fruits or vegetables. We constantly foraged for the spotted, the almost gross, and saved it from the trash by eating it, cooking it, or burying it in a casserole or soup.

I hesitated, my hand over the older pepper. I knew it would not be crunchy, and the bright red taste had faded to a tougher skin and limp texture. And then it struck me: there are omelets, soups, garnishes, juices that could benefit from the older pepper. But the firm one, the one glowing in the corner, is meant to be eaten now. While it is fresh and juicy. While it is “now” perfect. That is when I will appreciate it most, honor it best.

The older pepper can benefit from another technique, but this one? I’m celebrating it (and my taste buds) for its perfect combination of temperature, color, and happiness.

Life. Enjoy it while it’s fresh. We can’t control much, but we can control the choices we do have.

––Quinn McDonald sees big lessons in small places.

The Tiny Fence

The Invisible, Visible World depends on perspective. Seeing things differently than others. Appreciating what shows up in front of you as you walk.

I am two different people: one who wants to know how everything works, is interested in reasons and causes and one who wants to experience the world through my senses.

Sometimes I see something and just want to enjoy what I see, what it makes me think of, the memories it brings out.

Here’s an example of how it works: I saw the tiny plant, clearly planted as a seed, surrounded by sticks, clearly broken off by hand, and stuck in the ground.  A tiny, wireless fence. It looks as if a child did it, but there were five of them, all in a neat row. Too neat for a small child. How could that protect anything?

But as I stood and looked at it, in the middle of the downtown front yard, I realized that the most likely attacker of the plant would be birds. (No rabbits in this part of town.)

The sticks were too tall for the birds to reach over, too close together for the bigger birds to squeeze through, and too tall for them to jump over.

A week later, the plants were bigger, and still there. I noticed the shadows the sticks cast, and the health of the plant. I noticed that the soil was damp and smelled like rain.  The things that protect us don’t have to be fancy, or complicated. Simple works. On plants. On people.

–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach who helps people discover their creativity and put it to use. While she helps people who are labeled “creative,” she works with parents, investment bankers, teachers, and marketing executives, who often don’t know how to find their creativity.

 

New Tree, Old Tree

Trees have it tough in Arizona. The wind blows dust around them, wind gusts are high, the ground is hard, roots are fragile. Trees often topple in our monsoon season. Often, they are left to dry out before they are cut flat and removed.

This tree was left to die, but still had a life to live. You can see the cut end in the right of the photo. But the tree had other ideas. It started growing again.  Created a new tree right out of the old one, using what was available to create a whole new tree.

It was a lesson for me: Yes, I have fragile parts, and yes, I’ve been felled before. But giving up is a choice, and it doesn’t have to be the only choice.

It’s what I teach my coaching clients: you get to decide. You have a choice. Even when it doesn’t look like it, you have a choice. Build on the answer you want.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach and is working on a book: The Invisible, Visible World.

Blown By The Wind

Haboobs, or dust storms, roll into Phoenix regularly during monsoon. High winds push balcony furniture back and forth across the balcony, roll potted plants down the street, push birds into trees, and dirt into just about anything.

One of the nice parts of the storms is seeing the unusual places trash comes to rest. I’ve seen a Coke can in a tree, a hat stuck on a cactus, and a cat collar with no cat, hanging on a street sign.

This morning, I saw a vinca blossom, stripped from the plant, and stuck in a fan palm. This delights me for the unusual combination of color and shape. I also found the delicate palm fiber almost calligraphic as it held the blossom in place. Art is in front of us. All we need to do is enjoy it. My art to draw in my journal to remind me that I’m safe from the storm. This time.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and creativity coach who helps people get unstuck and dare to be happy.

The Useful Operculum

Yes, I know that the SEO for this post will be terrible. Who searches for “operculum” anyway? Who even knows what an “operculum” is? One of the joys of keeping a creative blog is knowing that there are ups and downs of attention spans, keywords, ideas, and results. Some will work better than others. Let’s hope this one works for you.

An operculum is a door. It can occur in plants or animals, but the one I’m talking about is the door that closes the opening in mollusks–snails.

The snail builds it for protection. When threatened, the mollusk retreats deep into the spiral of its shell, and closes the world out with the operculum.

The beauty of that spiral, the perfect geometry of the sea creature reminds me that utility does not have to be ugly just because it is practical. Even practical  objects should have a beauty that speak to its use. The operculum is smooth and polished, perfect enough to be a talisman, let alone a door.

The necessity of doors is important, too. For the mollusk, the operculum is protection from being eaten, from being forced from its shell.  From having sand heaved into the shell in a riptide.

I’m often jealous of that mollusk. I’d like to have a beautiful barrier against pain and abuse, against people who think that privacy is a sign of anger and unwillingness to mingle. Everything, from mollusk to human, needs time to be alone, to hear the soundless sky settling onto the earth. To hear the seed of an idea roll over and start to sprout. To weigh choices and decisions, consequences and risk. Because creativity is always about risk, and being certain is not.

The operculum is not a guard against the unknown, but a choice to increase growth. We all need an operculum.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who teaches writing. She is also a creativity coach, to help people put their creativity to work in their lives. She is writing a book about The Invisible, Visible World.

As Above, So Below

“As above, so below,” is a phrase with a long mystical history. Believers in magic and mysticism believe that the words were found on the Emerald Tablet, and kabbalists (Jewish mystics) believe that because we are made in the image of God, our lives are microcosms on the divine.

This image is a bit simpler, but no less beautiful in meaning. We don’t get rain often in Phoenix, and when we do, puddles are their own microcosm of the world.

In this one, you can see both the road and brickwork and the sky and trees. So, “as above, so below,” there is beauty wherever you stand.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who teaches writing and helps people put their own creativity to work. She is writing a book, The Invisible, Visible World.

The Shadow Side

Shadows play an important part in our lives. They depend on sun to exist. Without sun, there is no shadow. And a lack of shadow indicates a lack of sun. Simple enough.

But shadows have another meaning. Our “shadow” side is our darker side. The side that we don’t like as much, because it is mean, and shallow, and possibly dark. Without our shadow side, we could not be alert enough to compare one emotion to another. Sadness to joy, kindness to meanness. Without our shadow we would not be able to stay in balance.

Most shadows depend on a bit of dark blocking out light to create a shape. This shadow of a fence blocks out most of the light, but it is the light through the fence that defines the fence.

—Quinn McDonald is a writer and coach. She is writing a book on the Invisible, Visible World.