Creative differences, Pt. 2

The second assignment of my “Crash Course on Creativity” MOOC was to take a 30-minute “silent” walk, and observe the hell out of your surroundings.

Okay, the exact wording was: “Take a silent walk for 30 minutes and make note all that you notice. You can walk anywhere - in nature, a city, or a school. Capture your observations in a Mind Map that you will share with the class. While you are observing, pay attention to the sounds, the smells, the textures under your feet, etc. Look at things that are close up and far away, and sit quietly for at least 10 minutes to notice all the things around you.”

I might have fudged a bit, because I took a P&S camera with me to capture some of what I noticed, but since I often frame things around me as photos, I thought, wotthehell.

I chose to walk down Truman Avenue, in Los Altos, because it’s quiet, it’s ordinary and it kind of reminds me of the San Fernando Valley—around Canoga Park-ish. Same mono-storied ranch houses, same dusty yards, same stuck-in-time sensibility.

No doubt—same million-dollar price tags these days.

It was interesting to me that—assuming this development dates from the 50s-60s (which it looked like), all the houses are ranchers; why no Eichlers, as there are in my Sunnyvale neighborhood? Eichler was all the rage at the mid-century.

Also interesting that there are no sidewalks on Truman Avenue or its cross streets between Fremont & Oak. There are little splotches of curbs at the street intersections, but no sidewalks, no gutters, no sign of water runoff planning.

That early in the morning (0625-0705), there wasn’t a lot of activity—the intermittent jogger(s), one pedestrian, one dog walker, one cyclist. One man was visible, sitting at his kitchen table; he didn’t look up as I walked past.

Ambient sounds: a continuo of traffic from Highway 85 maybe half a mile away, song birds and crows. Closer to 0700 there were cars on Truman—the preponderance of them going South to North; I wonder where?

Although there were indications that some residents are updating their houses (construction vehicles, supplies, skip, port-a-potty etc.), most of the houses and yards look much as they’ve done for decades. The old yards included one with a hedge of rosemary—old enough and tended enough to be a solid barrier, 56 paces around the corner lot. (That house also had a rather droopy badminton net in the side yard, one of the few signs of yard-use activity in this neighborhood. The other was a swing hanging from a tree limb. Where do kids play?)

There were also lots of old rose bushes—roses from the time when big, blowsy blooms were in fashion. I couldn’t resist patting these puffy things (or running my hands along the rosemary hedge. I’d have rolled in it if I weren’t trying to maintain some degree of circumspection.)

An unexpected splash was this…well, I’m calling it “tree art”.

  

There was some new landscaping—tea roses, “designed” areas, a water feature. But most of the yards were old, more or less tended, but apparently not thought about much.

Looking up, there was a completely cloudless sky (another relentlessly perfect day in the Silicon Valley) and a crescent moon. Later, a small plane flew overhead, and a squirrel crossed the street on the phone cables while I was doing my sitting obbo.

Breathing in—there was the rose scent, the rosemary on my hands, orange blossoms, tangerine blossoms and jasmine.

It was a bit of a struggle for me to slow down—I walk for exercise and my usual pace “in the wild” is between a 13- and 14-minute mile. I had to tell myself to slow down and absorb. I also use exercise periods to work out plot points in my novel; that day on Truman Avenue I had to keep directing my brain back to observation-only mode. No plot points, no dialogue, no character revelations.

For ten minutes I sat on the curb at the junction of Truman and Havenhurst—watched the squirrel, the cyclist, the pod of three joggers. I noticed that the street signs are brown, and that there’s a neighborhood watch in effect. I did some mindful breathing. I sat still. That may be the longest period of time I’ve sat motionless without anesthesia being involved.

Thoughts sparked by this exercise:

Who lived in these houses when they were first built? What was their life like? How and why did they move on?

 Did they not walk? Why were there no sidewalks?

I need to take a course in botany—it’s frustrating not being able to recognize all those trees.

I came across an example of cloud pruning that stopped me in my tracks. That form of training shrubbery is all about the spaces between, a concept that I’m finding increasingly important in my life.

Here’s the bloody mind map I had to create. I spent hours on this damned thing and it pissed me off no end. I understand the concept that laying out information graphically can be a help to organizing your thoughts. Whoop-di-do. And I can be just as graphic as the next guy; sometimes more so. But narrative works just fine for me. 

Whatever serenity or sense of awareness we were supposed to have attained by taking the walk was completely burnt away by having to draw what looks to me like a diseased ganglion.

 

The only creativity that was sparked in me after that was in the ways I'd like to kill the instructors.