I circle back to the House of Percy. Imagination’s derision, derailment and debacle by the fates: depression, shame and anxiety. Albeit odd coincidence that the author of this book, which I stumbled upon in 1994 in Charleston, SC while in my residency (and as far afield from an imaginative space as a profession might take me), was teaching at the university in the town where I would eventually settle. Coincidence or fate? An oddity of the Universe?

Finding a voice, cultivating imagination, curating and incubating the inner sanctum of wild thoughts and energies requires fundamentals: fertile grown, abundance resources, energy to expend and the presence of time.

Scarcity destroys imagination. Scarcity depletes energies, consumes resources, squanders precious time. Scarcity leaves one without modicum or imagination. It robs the senses, leaving merely blackness and bleakness.

Nothing grows from that nothingness. Nothing arises from that desolation. Dreaming stops, imagining stops, creating stops- even in those most private corner of the mind.

And you grieve the loss. You recall once upon a time when you could create. When you made things, converted ideas to tangible things. Writer. Builder. Gardener. Imagineer. Where did she go? When did we get lost? Why did we get lost?

The better question: how do we move forward? Reversing to that previous space is impossible and frankly, undesirable. We don’t want to go back. We’ve fought so hard to survive and reach this point.

So, turn and face forward. Look about. Your perspective is wide. You arrive with the patina of experience and wisdom. And your voice is honeyed. You vision corrected. Your hearing discerning. All of your senses are keen and attuned.

Maybe, you have something to say, again. You have shed the weight of what you once carried, lightened by the unburdening. Buoyant. It is not hope that arrives. Hope is the aroma of a much earlier time. What arrives is certainty. You know you have stamina, resiliency to withstand, capacity to endure the scarcity and drought. You have developed, differentiated into a more complete form. Times are not yet abundant or full of richness, but you can sense the coming spring. A winter lies between now and then, but it is but a short season; winter never lasts forever.