Halloween Is a Holiday to Lift the Spirits

Do you have your Halloween costume yet?

I found mine by happy accident a couple weeks ago at a local Goodwill. I'd already been invited to a party. And then a few days later what do I see on one of the acres of racks but a sparkling floor-length red number, tagged Sultry Devil. It was $6 and amazing: a strapless sheath shining from top to bottom with see-through red bat sleeves and a small hooded cape as a wrap.

I've been so excited about this that I have the feeling I've posted about it already, though I don't find it on my blog.

If you want to add an enlivening tidbit to your schedule this month make a fun little to-do this year about this paradoxically playful celebration.

(My husband Bob has a pair of glittering red devil horns he always wears on Halloween in his office all day while seeing patients.)

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How to Cook Up New Stuff

From an article in Vogue on the design of a pocketbook:
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

I agree about the pile of junk, whether it's tangible junk or odds and ends of ideas and memories. I think we all have a good imagination, and when we sit and play with junk, that natural inventiveness kicks in.


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Cross-Pollenation and Mythic Imagination

First, the pollenation business.

A Google Alert arrived in my mail saying that another site had written about this blog. I clicked on that link and found myself at Mystic-Lit, where the writer of the day, Billie Hinton, was listing people, places, and processes that help her write fiction. Billie was kind enough to list this site, and while I was there at her post, I checked out some of the others on her list.

Now comes the mythic imagination part. Did you know there's a Mythic Imagination Institute that has an intriguing website and has put on at least one event that James Hillman describes as "a spiritual Spoleto Festival"? (Thank you, Billie, for this info.)

Here's a bit from the About Us page:

Our purpose is to enliven the imagination. Imagination is the root of empathy, innovation, problem solving, art, and science. Our way toward imagination cultivates the ground from which it springs: the observation and understanding of nature and human nature. This understanding exists universally in myths, folktales, sacred stories, and wisdom stories. It exists within the structure of story itself. It speaks through the images within the stories.

Once a while back my horoscope in the local weekly Independent told me I'd be better off if I viewed my life in more mythic terms. At first I didn't understand that. Now I think I do.

The question of when one's agent will return one's call becomes less aggravating when it's all part of "the hero's quest." Or when I read the Joseph Campbell quote on the Mythic Imagination site today: "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, in order to have the life that is waiting for us."

The Mythic Imagination site/institute/e-magazine encourages seeing art and every person's life in mythic terms. For me that turns performance-pressure down and the fire-to-write up, which is very good for the outcome and for the pleasure and ease of the process.


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