Returning to Summer, Zero State, and Guarding Against Creative Burn Out

As it has every year, my summer officially begins with the conclusion of the Summer 1 Semester of Creative Thinking & Problem Solving which runs for six weeks beginning in late May.  In the final weeks of the intensive schedule, I find myself in a unique state of flow, brimming with solutions, next steps and ideas for my own projects—and, even more important, on the cusp of actually having time to work on them.  It is an exhilarating place.  I will go so far as to call it sublime. 

This is because the one thing that I almost always neglect to take into account every semester is how exhausted I am when I do finally reach the end of six weeks of working full time in addition to teaching twice a week on a subject that is my passion.  In the first weeks of July, I unfortunately, do remember.  It is The Post Semester Funk.  It is not the blues, and not the Mean Reds, but is somewhere in between and filled with a lot of internal dialogue “what should I do now?” “I don’t know” “what should I do next?” “I don’t know.”  Other symptoms include moping, staring off into space, not being tired but being exhausted, misplacing objects around the house, and a sudden lack of productivity that involves opening email and FB about 10 times a day looking for a distraction.  

I have come to be very respectful of the P.S. Funk because I learned the hard way after my first semester of teaching, that it is a sign that I am on the cusp of Burn Out, one of Creativity’s greatest enemies.  The good news is that all of the creative tools that author Julia Cameron teaches, and which I share with my students, become my path out of the Bog of No Energy.  I go for walks, I return to yoga, I diligently do Morning Pages (even if most of the time is spent staring out at the morning sky), I sit on the porch and flip through summer magazines, I watch brainless TV and enjoy it.           

There is an upside to being depleted.  “Just let yourself sink to the bottom,” my yoga instructor said to me in her kind voice as I lay in a flat mess on the floor of the training room, in a posture that could only be called Ready-for-Sleep, “let yourself get back to Zero State.”  I am not very good at Zero State, especially knowing that it is a place that is far away from the energy that I had when I promised myself I would bring All My Ideas To Life! only the week before. 

Zero State is part of the path to getting out of The P.S. Funk.  In it, I am able to see clearly the truths that I need to manage for as a creative.  Creativity is a process.  More importantly, it is a slow process.  From feeling like I am super human, I “come down” from class and realize that I can’t do everything.  Or at least I can’t do everything and sustain it. 

However, at this place, this Zero Point, when there is nowhere to go but up, my energy returns.  I begin to savor it and my personal moments of creativity that are not part of any greater purpose than expression.  I take on small projects like trying a new recipe.  I go on Artist Dates to my favorite haunts.  I gradually “work” my way back through morning pages and walks, from “What is the point?” to “You know, I’ve really missed writing for my blog” to “Today I want to write a blog post.”

So here we are.  It is summer.  The days are long and perfect for creativity.  They are good for daydreaming and doing.  I have decided to write spontaneously this year, so while there will not be any set Summer Challenges, there will be musings and new inspiration. 

Michael Boodro, Editor in Chief of Elle Décor opens the summer issue with a beautiful little essay called “Summer Isn't What It Used to Be.”  He ends with a sentiment that called me back to the blog and to myself in my wonderful recovery from The P.S. Funk:

The season is never predictable, and no summer will probably ever seem as glorious as those we remember from our childhood, when it seemed as though it hardly rained and every night was full of fireflies.  But if sunny days and soft, lingering twilights seem more rare than ever, then we need to treasure them all the more when they do come along.

In creativity there are highs and lows.  Moments of exhilaration, moments of inspiration, moments of doubt, and moments of burn out and blockage.  Recognizing your own patterns of work and energy are important to nurturing yourself as a creative.  Learning your own symptoms of the beginning of what could be burn out before it sets in can help make you a smarter creative, allowing you to consciously choose to integrate the patterns and habits that allow you to rejuvenate your energy and creativity.

How do you nurture yourself and your energy after a big project?  If you have experienced burn out, what tools or tactics did you use to bring yourself back to a healthy state of creativity?  I would love to hear your own experiences or even your ways of rejuvenating yourself this summer here on The Paper Compass.            

Summer Creativity Challenge #4: Summer Songs

Song lyrics mix with illustrations
in my high school sketchbook

Music can be a powerful conjurer of memory.  Listening to a favorite song can evoke a place in time, the person who you were with, and reconnect you with past emotions.  Similar to scent, music is a key to unlocking memories and transporting ourselves through time and across emotions, which makes it a powerful creative tool.   

 

I grew up surrounded by music.  In the kitchen, my mom cooked to country music.  Keeping the boot-stomping-beat with her bare feet tapping against the tile, she listened (and often sang along to) Randy Travis and The Judds, names that I learned from the CD covers next to the stereo.  I would sometimes quietly say the vocalists’ names to myself, Wy-no-na, enjoying the exotic twang of the syllables.

At his picture framing store, my dad would listen to The Gator, the local Florida classic rock station.  He’d cut the mats to Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and clean the glass to Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again.”  The Beatles were also present, the double disc White Album frequently in the car.  My sister told me that the first song that she learned all the words to was The Beatles “When I’m 64” and would often suffer through my dad changing John Lennon’s lyrics to “Everyone has something to hide except me and my Mento®”—a roll of which would always be in the compartment between the seats.   

My musical taste solidified my sophomore year in high school when a long distant love interest sent me a tape of his playing guitar and singing The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Disarm.”  My crush only lasted the semester but my relationship with Billy Corrigan and alternative rock had only just begun.  Through the flannel-and-corduroy-filled halls of my high school and through my brother—who took our shared love of these new bands to the next level by teaching himself to play the guitar—I was familiar with the music of major bands such as Nirvana, Hole and Red Hot Chili Peppers.  I found my own niche though within the genre and played obsessively the albums of groups such as Veruca Salt and Belly.  The metaphorical lyrics seemed mysterious and poetic, and matched my yearning to leave Florida to go to college in Boston. 

Looking back, my senior year (1995/96) was filled with musical highlights in the release of albums such as the much anticipated Smashing Pumpkins’ double album, Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness and, (perhaps eagerly anticipated only to me) Belly’s King.  In tribute, I spent the rainy afternoons in Mrs. Fazenbaker’s Statistics class inscribing Smashing Pumpkins song lyrics on the rubber soles of my Converse in blue ballpoint pen. 

With my early acceptance letter arriving from Boston University in November, it was these albums that formed my personal soundtrack for my final time in Florida.  The poignant lyrics of “Tonight, Tonight” and “Shakedown 1979” captured that same yearning that came with looking forward to leaving.  Belly’s “The Bees” expressed the sadness and complexity I felt around my personal relationships in the light of the anticipated change.

In August, my family and I loaded up my Dad’s Chevy Tahoe, transferring the pile of plastic bins, bedding, towels, bathroom baskets, must-have-books, keep sakes, and a $29 file cabinet that I had insisted on buying to put my writing in, from the living room to the car.  As my dad and I set out on our drive up to Boston, I put Belly’s King in the car stereo where it took us on the first leg of our journey up 95. 

Around the Florida-Georgia border my dad put in Crosby,Stills and Nash CSN and their harmonies accompanied us most of the way to New England. A staple in my music collection, it wouldn’t be until years later that I would appreciate the way that CSN, an album that I view as “my dad’s music” and filled with songs such as “Carried Away” and “Just a Song Before I Go” that are more poignant now than on that summer drive, can take me back to that long trek up the east coast to begin a new phase of my life in Boston.

All of this is inspiration for the fourth Summer Creativity Challenge: Summer Songs.  What songs formed the soundtracks to your summers past?  When you listen to the songs, what memories come to you?  How did you discover the music or band?  What emotions does it evoke?  

With this as your touchpoint, write a short one page piece inspired by the music of a memorable summer.  It can be memoir or a fictional interpretation.  Or, if you are musically inclined, you could be inspired to write a song.  From creating a new playlist to digging out an old mix tape, record your impressions, inspirations, ideas, and memories in your sketchbook and share here on The Paper Compass. 

    

2012 Summer Creativity Challenges Commence! Tap into a Season of Creativity

This season marks the third year of Summer Creativity Challenges, weekly activities designed to stimulate your creative process by tapping into themes and memories that make the most of summer.

Summer is a season ripe for creativity, not only do we have more daylight hours but there is also a sense of having more time in our schedules (and hopefully some vacation too).  This is also a season that brings out our natural tendency to play and explore, two of the key tenants of creative discovery. 

I have always believed that there is a certain magic to summer, a thinning of the veil between the past and present.  With our senses stimulated by the scents, sounds, flavors, textures and lush summer landscape, we are more easily able to tap into memories from our childhood or other times. 

Memory plays an important part in the creative process.  We use our own experiences and observations of the world around us to “fill the well,” as author Julia Cameron calls the process of restocking our internal creative resources.  Summer offers the perfect time to take in the world, explore our own memories, and be playful with new ideas.

I feel the spirit of the Summer Creativity Challenges is captured in this beautiful quote by artist Rebekah Maysles, “If I could dream up the perfect summer day, it would be a combination of time and place.  I would be able to move around from Long Island Sound to Harlem, from when I was younger to now, with people who are here and those who are no longer . . .”

For the next eight weeks, The Paper Compass invites you to play and share around these creative activities.  Each week we will feature a weekly Summer Creativity Challenge post on a theme or topic that is open for your own interpretation.  You can think about it, savor remembering it, write about it, create an artist date around it, or do whatever comes to mind.  The intention is that the topic, or something related to the topic directly or indirectly, will spark an idea that can be of use to you in the future—or may just be really enjoyable and inspire some creativity in the now.

Most importantly, feel free to share your ideas, memories, thoughts and feedback around each post.

If you’d like to take a look at previous Summer Creativity Challenges you can review where we’ve been and what we’ve explored:

2010

Week #1 Candy

Week #2 Books

Week #3 Ice Cream

Week #4 Sunrise, Sunset and High Noon

Week #5 Spontaneous Play

Week #6 Wanderlust

Week #7 Adventures

Week #8 Alfresco

2011      

Week #1 The Beach

Week #2 Summer Jobs

Week #3 Summer Camp

Week #4 Scents of Summer

Week #5 Summer Love

Week #6 Postcards

Week #7 Time Travel

Week #8 Labor

Also, the Summer Creativity Challenges are not written in stone.  I have an idea of the topics for the next 8 weeks, but if you have a suggestion or want us to return to a favorite and explore it from a different perspective, please let me know!

Check back in on Sunday for our first Summer Creativity Challenge.

Create a Summer Adventure List & Start the Summer Off Right

Memorial Day weekend arrives, marking the unofficial beginning of summer.  It’s time to bring out the grill, and also time to break out the markers and a piece of paper on which to compose your Summer Adventure List. 

A great tool for keeping all your summer ideas, plans and projects front and center, a Summer Adventure List is a great way to start the season off right.  It ensures that the summer doesn’t fly by without making time for those “This summer I want to . . .” activities that can fall by the wayside once the summer is off and running.  A Summer Adventure List also means that you'll have on-hand ideas for a summer full of activities that embody good creative thinking habits: adventure, exploration and play.   

My extremely organized friend, fellow paper lover and list-maker, Danielle, gave me the idea to create a summer list several years ago when I was lamenting that the summer goes by too fast.  She mentioned that she made a list of summer time activities that she wanted to get in by the end of the season and paper-clipped it to her kitchen calendar.  Since then, I have seen the idea appear in a few places, including this month’s Better Homes and Gardens magazine where they call it a “Sand Pail List” (a clever seasonal twist on the traditional Bucket List.)

My Summer Adventure List is not exclusive to only big-deal adventures.  Rather it contains a wealth of activities and projects that I want to approach with the mentality of an adventurer—from research on a writing project to visiting local historic sites.  Adventuring, as I have written about for the Summer Challenges, is a key ingredient to creative thinking, and as a frame of mind, it allows us to remain open and curious as we observe the journey.  It can make a boring task or obligation feel fresh and new, or it can take something that feels overwhelming and foreign and make it feel approachable.

My Summer Adventure List is sometimes a traditional list and sometimes it is a mind map.  I use a list format to capture an overview of the activities I want to do, go to, or need to plan for.  I use a mind map when I also want to include summer reading and creative projects.  I often create both, keeping the list on the refrigerator as an everyday reminder and my mind map in my sketchbook, where I can cross reference it as I work.

I encourage you to take an half hour this weekend, alone or with your family, to create a Summer Adventure list.  From taking an evening walk to get ice cream to planning a day trip, any adventure, big or small, that you want to do this summer should go on the list.  Have fun creating it and make sure to leave room on your list and schedule for additional ideas for adventures that will come to you over the next several weeks of warm weather.  

Do you have a tradition of keeping a Summer Adventure List?  If so, what are some of your favorite activities to list?  For those creating their Summer Adventure List, what are some of your activities listed that you are looking forward to?

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. – G. K. Chesterton       

                        

Summer Challenge Week Seven: Time Travel

Challenge #7: Time Travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time, is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better. In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.

If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)

With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

This summer, I have been experimenting with time travel.

A popular form of travel mainly occurring in science fiction books, TV, movies, and the DC comic universe, it is also the Big Idea behind the well done radio ad campaign for the non-profit organization Historic New England. With their cleverly designed “passport” guide to their 36 preservation properties in five states in-hand, my time travel adventures this summer took me back to 1940 at the Walter Gropius house and to circa 1890 at The Codman Estate, both in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

With time travel on my mind, it was with some interest that I learned that physicists from Hong Kong University recently announced that time travel is impossible and officially only something that could occur in science fiction. A fan of Jack Finney’s classic time travel books Time and Again and From Time to Time, I was a little disappointed to hear this conclusion, presented in a radio news story as I made my way slowly through traffic on Mass Ave.

While there is a part of me that respects that the speed of a photon cannot travel faster than the speed of light—hereby supporting Einstein’s theory that “an effect cannot occur before its cause”—there is another part of me that holds out hope though, that maybe just like in Finney’s novels, time travel is closer to hypnosis, and therefore just another deeper layer of the mind, rather than an actual place.

Another pin pick to the theory of time travel is English theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Stephen Hawking’s observation that if time travel was possible, we would have more tourists from the future. While we could surmise that they are very discrete, the lack of time travel tourists seems to point to evidence of it not being possible, or something that is not explored. Based on the number of ostentatious baby blue CSI crime scene booties that I have worn this summer to carefully traipse across the floors of historic houses without further wearing down the carpet—I can tell you one thing, I don’t think that time travel could ever be subtle.

But I like this idea of time travel tourists. It is a perfect expression for the nostalgic pleasure that I experience when I see the house stationery on the desk at The Codman Estate with “The Grange” engraved on the envelope—no need for an address. Or the long built-in desk where Walter Gropius and his wife worked side by side the window before them framing the view of a hill covered with long yellow grass and Queen Ann's Lace in the summer.

While most people on the house tours seem to be interested in the craftsmanship of the floor tile or the rarity of the paintings, I am imagining an evening conversation at the Gropius dinner table with its dramatic lighting. Or what happened to motivate the oldest Codman daughter, whose bedroom is filled with her own watercolor paintings, to ride her bicycle from Lincoln to Marblehead in one day in the early summer at the turn of the century. Was it athleticism? Curiosity? Boredom? Did she start riding and then just keep going? Did she forgo her corset? Did any of her friends begin the journey with her and decide to turn back while she continued on alone?

I believe that the role of the imagination is to create blue prints for ideas, to test them out, to taste them before we make them real. As a writer, my version of time travel inspires me toward new ideas for stories and also helps me see details that may make the story authentic.

Time travel though is also a way to step away from our own lives. Understanding a different time in history can be as inspiring as understanding a new culture. In learning, you open up your mind not just to immediate insights about what you are studying, but also gain insights into your own life, or the reasons behind why you do something a certain way. There are many “departing gates” for being a time travel tourist, from history books, to antique stores, to museum artifacts. This week especially though, I encourage you to do some immersion time travel by visiting a historical house or building in your town and see what it inspires.

All of this is inspiration for the seventh summer challenge: time travel. The concept of time travel, of being able to move backwards and forwards to different points in time is an important part of creative thinking. With a little imagination it can show us the way that something has always been done, or it can give us the freedom to imagine the future and the way we believe it could be done better (this is especially important for innovation—think of Dick Tracey’s futuristic walkie-talkie watch or the Futurism art movement at the beginning of the 20th Century). In this interpretive weekly challenge, I encourage you to do some of your own time traveling this week. Become a time travel tourist and visit a local historical house or site. You can also do some arm chair traveling and pick up a biography about someone who you admire from a different time period or rent a movie from a different era. Pay close attention to what stories or experiences you find memorable, or what objects capture your attention.

If the past holds little interest to you, travel to the future by sending a postcard or letter from your “future self” to your current self. How many years in the future is it? How old are you? What are you doing? What advice do you have for your current (past) self. (Think Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol for this exercise.)

With the concept of time travel as your touchpoint, whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Five: Summer Love

Challenge #5: Summer Love. Summer gives us a unique time to be bold, to feel open, and to experiment. In this interpretive challenge, think about your own summer loves—romantic and/or experimental (such as a new idea, endeavor, or hobby.) How did you feel when they were happening? How did you feel after the summer ended? If you were to bring more romance or creative expression to your summer, how would you do so? If you were to create your own Summer of Love in the remaining weeks of summer, what would you do? How would it affect your daily life or routine?

With this as your touchpoint, this week meditate on summer love. You may be inspired by the core concepts of experimentation, openness and freedom of expression OR you may remember a relationship that made your summer memorable. Summer love, especially romance lends itself to many mediums for storytelling—visual, literary, or musical. You may also be inspired to experiment with integrating some Summer of Love creative expression into your weekly routine. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

From Sandy and Danny to Sammi and Ronnie, summer has always been a season of love. Whether it is the seductive call of a warm night, the baring of skin, or the inevitable end date, summer romances are well documented in literature, movies, and what seems like an almost endless repertoire of songs. The dictionary defines romance as something that is fanciful, impractical, idealized and sentimental. Add in summer and you get the classic definition of summer romance: two (sometimes unlikely) people being open to taking a risk on their attraction, with no idea where it will go after the summer ends. In the case of Sandy and Danny in the musical Grease, we get to see the challenges of the romance when school returns. In the case of Sammi and Ronnie on the Jersey Shore, we get to watch multiple episodes of bad behavior. Love is never easy.

Summer heightens emotions. Like attracts like. People (especially youth) gather.

In the summer of 1967, roughly 100,000 people gathered in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, creating a hub for the hippie counterculture movement that spread across the US during what was known as The Summer of Love. It was a pivotal summer in history, when the 60’s counterculture gained awareness in the US as a cultural revolution and the movement spread through similar gatherings in many other cities in the US, Canada and Europe. Synonymous with creative expression, communal living, free love, psychedelic drugs and music, The Summer of Love was also seen as a social experiment. “It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one’s existence” Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir said of Haight-Ashbury and The Summer of Love.

Just like any summer relationship (think Sammi and Ronnie more than Sandy and Danny) The Summer of Love, had consequences both good and bad that have shaped who we are today. Beat poet Michael McClure says of the summer of 1967, "If these young people hadn't declared the possibility of a new culture, a new family, a new tribe, believing in peace, nature, sexuality, the positive use of psychedelic drugs -- if they hadn't been there to broaden and deepen the hundreds of thousands and then millions of people who were broadened and deepened by this -- we would be in an even bigger [global environmental and economic] stew."

Whether it is a summer love or The Summer of Love, both of these experiences—one personal and one cultural—at their heart are about being open and taking creative risks. Summer love is about the freedom of exploring new ideas and new relationships without the restraints of the analytical mind of fall and winter. Most importantly, summer love is about the very important creative principle of experimenting.*

All this is the inspiration for the fifth summer challenge: Summer Love. Summer gives us a unique time to be bold, to feel open, and to experiment. In this interpretive challenge, think about your own summer loves—romantic and/or experimental (such as a new idea, endeavor, or hobby.) How did you feel when they were happening? How did you feel after the summer ended? If you were to bring more romance or creative expression to your summer, how would you do so? If you were to create your own Summer of Love in the remaining weeks of summer, what would you do? How would it affect your daily life or routine?

With this as your touchpoint, this week meditate on summer love. You may be inspired by the core concepts of experimentation, openness and freedom of expression OR you may remember a relationship that made your summer memorable. Summer love, especially romance lends itself to many mediums for storytelling—visual, literary, or musical. You may also be inspired to experiment with integrating some Summer of Love creative expression into your weekly routine. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

*The terms “risk” and “experimenting” are to be used within the context of creative thinking. Please be safe!

Summer Challenge Week Four: Scents of Summer

Memory

That was the second Fourth of July
I didn't go down to the river.
I thought of you though, and when the sparks
of rockets and Roman candles lit the neighborhood
I strayed
halfway down the street,
sparkler in hand,
the smell of sulfur in my nose,
when it burned out.

And I ran from there,
to the dirt road behind the Bowman's house,
dogs barking from screened-in porches
in the Country Club. This is where you and I
had stolen the oranges. Walked barefoot
next to the fire ant piles
juice dripping from our fingers.

Through the dark, the red beacon
of the electrical box, blinking slowly
a quarter mile down. I cut across
the vacant lot, burs sticking
to my shoelaces,
back to the driveway where my dad
was dispensing sparklers to the neighbors.

And we all ran
out into the street
writing our names, spinning
until we fell down dizzy,
like stars in the grass.

Challenge #4: Scents of Summer. If you were to bottle summertime, what would it smell like? Are there certain scents that you associate with each month of the summer? Or are there certain scents that make different locations distinct? Think about the scents of this summer compared to ones in the past. What is the same? What is different?

With this as your touchpoint, this week notice and be inspired by the scents of summer. Scents are a particularly powerful literary vehicle, and I encourage you to write a poem or a short prose piece that is rich in the sensory details of scent. You can also be inspired to go on an artist date to recapture a familiar scent of summer. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

To the boy Henry Adams, summer was drunken. Among senses, smell was the strongest—smell of the hot pine-woods and sweet fern in the scorching summer noon; of the new mown hay; of the ploughed earth; of box hedges; of peaches, lilacs, syringas; of stables, barns, cow yards; of salt water and low tides on the marshes; nothing came amiss. –The Education of Henry Adams, Henry Adams

Every summer my brother and I take on (what I consider) a semi-imposing literary classic. Last summer it was Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust, and this summer, The Education of Henry Adams. One of my favorite things about the book is the way that the young Henry’s education begins with the senses, from his learning the color yellow from the sunlight on the yellow floor of the kitchen, to his first memory of taste (a baked apple) and then to the rich scents of summer that distinguish the freedom of his summers in Quincy from the "compulsory learning" of fall and winter in Boston.

Scent is a powerful sense, especially in humans where it is highly connected to memory. Different from other animals, smells, when they are in the human brain are transmitted to two locations. First, the olfactory epithelium sends the scents to the thalamus in the frontal cortex of the brain, which then identifies the smell. But in primates, the scent also goes to the limbic area. This is a primal part of the brain that deals with motivation, emotion, pleasure, and types of memory associated with food.

Thanks to the connection with the limibic area of the brain, we have a phenomenon known as “Proustian Memory” which is the exceptional experience of a scent releasing a flood memories. It is named after the author Marcel Proust who began his novel Swan’s Way with, what could possibly be the most famous scent captured in literary history: a memory spun from the scent of a lime-blossom tea drenched madeleine.

Scents are an integral part of any season. Sometimes they are very prominent, such as the scents we associate with the winter holidays, and sometimes they are more subtle, part of the day to day activities that make the season and location distinct, as Henry Adams captures in the quote above.

When I think about the scents of summer, I think about the smell of ripe peaches, hamburgers on the grill, suntan oil, freshly mowed grass, and the smoky-sulfur scent of sparklers. This last scent is a scent that evokes for me powerful memories of the 4th of July, and my dad, who would always lead the neighborhood in setting off fireworks. There would be an air of excitement, danger, anticipation and exhilaration on those 4th of July nights, and all I have to do is light a sparkler to remember all of it.

All of this is inspiration for the fourth summer challenge: scents of summer. If you were to bottle summertime, what would it smell like? Are there certain scents that you associate with each month of the summer? Or are there certain scents that make different locations distinct? Think about the scents of this summer compared to ones in the past. What is the same? What is different?

With this as your touchpoint, this week notice and be inspired by the scents of summer. Scents are a particularly powerful literary vehicle, and I encourage you to write a poem or a short prose piece that is rich in the sensory details of scent. You can also be inspired to go on an artist date to recapture a familiar scent of summer. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Special thanks to Taryn McCormick for sharing her image for the post.
The poem Memory is from my chapbook Ophelia's Florida & Other Poems, published in 1999 by PPB Press.

Summer Challenge Week Two: Summer Jobs

Challenge #2: Summer Jobs. What summer jobs have you had? Which was your favorite and why? Which was your least favorite and why? Is there anything you have “taken with you” as a learning experience, or a story, from a summer job? Is there anything that you would never do again? Is there anything that you would like to do again? Who were the people you worked with? What were their habits? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes of that summer job? So often as adults we ask people, “what do you do?” Think about what you could learn if you asked, “What summer jobs did you have?” With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of either a cherished or loathed summer job and the people and place that made up the environment. You can do this as a writing exercise, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Although not on my original list, this challenge was inspired by an in-class writing exercise from the Summer Workshop for Returning Writers that I’m taking, taught by Julia Thacker. She was, in turn, inspired by author Aimee Bender’s monthly writing exercise on her website. I thought that it was too good a summer challenge to not share.

I find summer jobs infinitely interesting and a wealth of great sensory and plot details. With their seasonal beginning and end, they are not unlike short stories. With a summer job we get to experience people and tasks (and sometimes even places) that we will most likely not see or do again (much to some people's relief).

Summer jobs are often filled with a creative cocktail of repetitive activities and really interesting people which is ideal for creating “sticky” and interesting details. For instance, my brother worked at the record store at the mall one summer, and if I remember correctly, his manager spent a great deal of time sleeping under the desk in the back. My sister worked in the sundries shop at a local hotel and had stories that covered the spectrum from wedding nights
gone wrong to strange conversations with even stranger guests.

While not my first summer job, the most vivid of them—my time hostessing at Chuck & Harold’s on Palm Beach, the summer after my freshman year at BU—was the first to come to mind for the in-class writing exercise and I have placed it below to share.

Summer Job 1997

In June, on Palm Beach, it rains at least twenty-eight days out of the thirty in the month. From the hostess stand at Chuck & Harold’s, I would watch the sheets of it fall every afternoon like clockwork. Sweeping in from the west, it would come as a downpour, flooding the street and knocking down husks from the palm trees lining Flagler Drive. It would end just as abruptly, leaving the evening air smelling humid and lush.

When the rain began, the busboys would unroll the plastic curtains around the outside tables that lined the sidewalk. When the curtains were rolled back it signaled a shift change. The daytime staff would take off their aprons and finalize tips with managers. While the evening servers and night managers would arrive, straightening ties, and tying on their aprons. The tables would be reset and the menus would change from brunch and lunch, to early bird special and dinner, the paper would sometimes still be warm from the printer in the back office.

I would take my break and eat conch chowder and a fresh, warm roll out in the courtyard behind the kitchen. When I returned to the front, the parrots would be on the power lines outside the post office with their loud calls and the first of the early bird diners would descend, elderly and frail with dispositions that belied their looks.

A veteran waiter once told me that he believed people are at their worst before eating. By the end of the summer, I felt that I had enough anthropologic evidence to back up his theory. One event, resulting from a busboy hazy with purpose while wooing one of the younger waitresses, hastily cleared a table without watching where he wiped the crumbs. When I arrived to seat a party of four, one of the men said to me, while shaking a liver-spotted pointed finger, “You can brush the crumbs off that chair or buy me a new suit.” Evenings that began like that signaled a long night.

The afternoons, though, when it rained and the only customers were the trust fund bachelors who would come in and sit at the bar, greeting the entire staff by name, were slow and good for daydreaming. I would answer the phone, take reservations and, in-between calls, write lines of poetry on scraps of paper with the thick waxy pencil from the hostess stand. It was my favorite time of day—the dining areas set and expectant, the rain moving east, out to the ocean, and the summer stretching ahead feeling slow and infinite in the moment—safe with the promise of another semester of college on the horizon.

*****

All of this is inspiration for the second summer challenge: summer jobs. What summer jobs have you had? Which is your favorite and why? Which is your least favorite and why? Is there anything you have “taken with you” as a learning experience from a summer job? Is there anything that you would never do again? Is there anything that you would like to do again? Who were the people you worked with? What were their habits? What were the sights, sounds, smells, and even tastes of that summer job? So often as adults we ask people, “what do you do?” Think about what you could learn if you asked, “What summer jobs did you have?”

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of either a cherished or loathed summer job and the people and place that made up the environment. You can do this as a writing exercise, or record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts—then share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week One: The Beach

Challenge #1: The sea-side has its own unique culture, and can be evoked in many ways, through colors, textures and scents, or even through sounds or activities. This week you are encouraged to use as a point of inspiration the beach, especially the experience of going to the beach and your beach related memories. (If you have never been to the beach you can do this exercise with a local swimming spot or lake-side destination.) Key to this challenge is considering: What sensory experiences make up your memories or sense of being at the beach? What memories of the beach do you have? Who are you with? What does the beach mean to you (or even represent)? How is the beach you go to unique from other beaches? Relaxation and play are key ingredients for creative thinking—if the beach is not near, is there a way to evoke a “life’s a beach” frame of mind? With these as your touch-points, this week capture your memories of the beach or, if possible, plan an ocean-side Artist Date. Record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

Growing up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, our family tradition was to go to the beach every Sunday, where we would sit in a large group with my dad’s family—my grandparents, my aunt and uncle and cousins—and sometimes other families that our parents were good friends with. As a kid, nothing was better than Sunday mornings on the beach, building sand castles, listening to the adults talk and laugh, and spending hours jumping off the low wall from the parking lot into the soft sand. On the way there, my parents would always pick up a dozen doughnuts, and sometimes even Munchkins. Jelly doughnuts were my favorite even if it was sometimes difficult to distinguish sandy finger prints from granulated sugar. (To this day though, I still crave Dunkin Donuts on Sunday mornings.)

My grandfather was always one of the first people to go in the ocean, no matter how cold. I remember that he had a special pair of rubber-bottomed, net shoes that he would wear in the water so that he would not cut his feet on the barnacles on the rocks. My dad and I would go out to meet him, my dad helping me past the waves. We would join Grandpop where it was just deep enough for me to not be able to touch. I would bob under the surface until I could push myself back up with my toes and doggy paddle, circling my dad. Grandpop would float on his back in the water for long stretches of time, his net shoes pointing up toward the sky.

At the end of the day, we would go back to my dad’s white Volkswagen bus (the same kind you see in grainy pictures of Woodstock) and slide back the door and the heat from the summer day would roll out at us like an invisible wall of fire. The white naugahyde seats would be so hot that they’d burn the back of your legs. We would cover every inch of them with towels, now damp and sandy. Then we would climb in and roll the windows down one struggling crank at a time, and slide the back windows open as far as they would go. On the drive home the wind would dry your skin leaving a film of ocean salt and sand.

The beach and summertime have always gone together in my life, with the exception being the decade that we lived in Florida. Even then though, the beach with its breezes was a least a place to take refuge from the humidity, the sun and heat being inescapable. For many, going to the beach, for a day or a week, represents a summer tradition. It is a destination cultivated around sunlight, heat and free time.

Being at the beach contains a certain liberation from daily life unlike other destinations. It is a location that invites you to breathe deep, take in the vast uninterrupted expanse of the ocean, and partake in two traditional beach behaviors: relax or play. In a way, the beach encompasses all of the most treasured values of summertime.

The beach is also rich in sensory experiences that make our memories of it very powerful and evocative. Luckily much of what gives us a sense of place at the beach has to do with things that to this day remain unchanged, making it easy to evoke memories through something as simple as the scent of suntan lotion, a salty breeze, or even certain colors.

All of this is inspiration for the first Summer Challenge: The Beach. The sea-side has its own unique culture, and can be evoked in many ways, through colors, textures and scents, or even through sounds or activities. This week you are encouraged to think about or use as a point of inspiration, the beach—especially the experience of going to the beach and your beach related memories. (If you have never been to the beach you can do this exercise with a local swimming spot or lake-side destination.) Key to this challenge is considering: What sensory experiences make up your memories or sense of being at the beach? What different memories of the beach do you have, who are you with? What does the beach mean to you or even represent? How is your beach unique from other beaches? Relaxation and play are key ingredients for creative thinking—if the beach is not near, is there a way to evoke a “life’s a beach” frame of mind?

With this as your touchpoint, this week capture your memories of the beach or, if possible, plan an ocean-side Artist Date. Record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

PS. The image for this post is a painting that my dad created. It is much enjoyed in my family for its open interpretation of the image: either a calm sea with a breaking wave in the foreground or when flipped upside-down a sea with menacing sky.

2011 Summer Challenges Commence! Tapping into a Season of Creative Experiences

Summer has arrived. Through the open windows come the sounds of lawn mowers. In the evening, the soft murmur of voices punctuated by laughter as neighbors sit on their porches and talk late into the night. The light lingers, and only by nine o’clock can the first stars be distinguished in the sky. The heat comes, tanning skin, dampening brows, and making the fans work hard through the still afternoons.

This is my favorite time of year. There is something special in the long days, the slow heat, and the sense of extended time that lends itself to creative exploration, awareness of the moment, and playfulness. As I wrote last summer, summertime seems a season where the veil between the past and the present becomes translucent. Memories rise to the surface like ice cubes in a glass of lemonade, clinking together, gently reminding you of things long forgotten or of the origins of traditions still carried out. This point of memory is a wellspring of ideas that can foster new creative endeavors or add kindling to on-going ones. Summer also gives us a feeling of there being time to relax, and creativity always blossoms when you have time to daydream.

Summer Challenges began last summer, inspired by a vague memory that turned into a weekend project to reacquaint myself with a pack of Big League Chew, a gum I hadn't had since I was about ten. From this simple adventure developed some great moments of inspiration and re-connection to many other memories (and some old friends). In the eight weeks of the Dog Days of Summer last year, we explored Candy, Books, Ice Cream, Sunrise, Sunset & High Noon, Spontaneous Play, Wanderlust, Adventures, and Alfresco as touch points for remembering and creating.

I hope that you will join us for another eight weeks of Summer Challenges. We will be exploring a number of new topics, such as Camp and The Beach, as well as many more. These posts are inspiration points for exploration to jump start creative thinking (or even an Artist Date.) They can be interpreted in many ways, and “captured” creatively through any medium from writing and painting to photography to a brief sketch. Whether they inspire you to a completed piece, point you to a long lost memory, or are noted as an idea for later use, I hope that you will share some of your experiences and work in the comment section after each post.

Happy creating!

Summer Challenge Week Eight: Alfresco

Challenge #8: Alfresco. This week (and the remaining weeks of summer) take the time to be outside. Picnic, read, work, eat, daydream, lay in the sun, do something productive in a new place, or unproductive in a favorite haunt. Most importantly, savor it. Summer goes by all too quickly. For this alfresco adventure, bring your sketchbook along, or document your time outside with photos, a story, or a memento and share here on The Paper Compass

When you are someone who loves language, you know that sometimes there are words that just make your whole being perk up. For me, the word alfresco is one of them. Not only does it roll off the tongue in lovely, velveteen Italian, but when added to another word, it makes the occasion infinitely more exciting, such as, “We are dining alfresco this evening.” Not just dining, but how lovely! dining alfresco. (It is also a word that is just plain fun to say out loud.)

Alfresco, quite simply, means outside or out-of-doors. In a more literal translation, dating back to the mid-1700s, it means: a cool place. It is the perfect summertime word. And while most commonly used to refer to dining outside, for me it is a summertime mindset.

Unlike any other season, the summer is about living alfresco. The world beckons lush and humid, the days are long, the evenings soft. In the summer, my back porch becomes my office, my breakfast nook, my reading area, and general all purpose place that I can be found. I appreciate being surrounded by my potted herbs and flowers, the breeze, the light, the birdsong. With that enjoyment also come the sublime knowledge that only too soon I will be inside listening to the radiators hiss. Wearing sweaters. Drinking my coffee hot. So I know that every moment on the porch, outside in the summer, is to be savored.

More than any other time of year, in the remaining weeks of summer we should take the time to step outside. To take ourselves off to that place in the shade to read, to dine, to nap. This week, for the final summer challenge, I encourage you to be inspired by the word alfresco. Take the time this week (and in the remaining weeks of summer) to take your activities outside, whether it is reading the paper and having your coffee or even as elaborate as borrowing the office data projector and using a sheet across a laundry line to have an outdoor movie night. Be creative with your alfresco adventure, or just take the time to savor your time in the sun.

This brings us to the Eighth (and final) Summer Challenge: Alfresco. This week (and the remaining weeks of summer) take the time to be outside. Picnic, read, work, eat, daydream, lay in the sun, do something productive in a new place, or unproductive in a favorite haunt. Most importantly, savor it. Summer goes by all too quickly. For this alfresco adventure, bring your sketchbook along, or document your time outside with photos, a story, or a memento and share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Seven: Adventures

Challenge #7: Last week we explored how summer is often a time for journeys. This week we will take on the (often more accessible) Summer Adventure in all its interpretations. Key to this challenge is considering: What does adventuring mean to you? When was the last time you went on something that felt like an adventure? Adventures are a key ingredient to creative thinking. They should feel new, fresh, exciting, unknown, exploratory, and playful—which means that adventures can often be a frame of mind. With that as your touchpoint, think about all the new adventures you can have in a day—whether it means going to a new coffee shop or taking a different route to work, or planning a day trip to a different part of the state. This week, plan an adventure, big or small. Go adventuring and record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

I am seated Indian style on the familiar floor of my local yoga studio, while a petite Korean woman works her way down the uneven row of people seated around me. I am watching her methodically remove a small patch of rubbing alcohol from the crown of the heads of the people before me, and then insert a long thin acupuncture needle with a quick tap, tap into the Sahasrara, also known as Heaven’s Gate, or, more simply, the Seventh Chakra.

It is Saturday afternoon and I have paid a small entrance fee for this special open-to-the-public workshop. While I had been initially curious by the posters at the yoga center, it was the open schedule of my afternoon that was the tipping point. I didn’t have a reason to not go, plus yoga events almost always make me feel joyous afterwards.

I reminded myself of this as the line of people sitting to my right, with what looked like small antennae sticking out of their heads, progressed closer to me. I tried to focus on my breathing, but I kept worrying if it was going to hurt, or if my over-active imagination, kept under extremely tight rein in my Clark Kent-like guise, was going to come bursting out of the top of my head, unleashed with the prick of the needle and fill the room with a dark, rotating cloud-like substance that would sweep out over the suburbs like a level 5 hurricane.

“Are you alright?” the Spiritual Acupuncturist casually, and not unkindly, asks me. She then distracts me by handing me the wrapper for the four inch needle that she then tap, taps into my head.

It barely even pinches.

And then there is a slow sensation of warmth trickling down from the top of my head, down my neck, and slowly making its way to the tips of my fingers. The sensation reminds me of a game my mom used to play with my brother, sister and I where she would break an imaginary egg on the crown of our heads, her hands spreading out from the top of our skulls, her fingers trailing slowly through our hair and down the sides of our faces like imaginary ribbons of egg whites, causing a sensation both hypnotic and full of creepy-crawlies. We would inevitably squirm away, only to come back and ask her to do it again.

This is the peculiar and wonderful moment where I realize that I am very glad that I came to the yoga seminar, as I am having an Official Adventure—even if it is in the unexpected form of sitting on the floor with a large needle sticking out of my head.

And this is the inspiration for the Seventh Summer Challenge: Adventures. Last week we explored how summer is often a time for journeys. This week we will take on the (sometimes more accessible) Summer Adventure in all its interpretations. Key to this challenge is considering: What does adventuring mean to you? When was the last time you went on something that felt like an adventure?

Adventures are a key ingredient to creative thinking. They should feel new, fresh, exciting, unknown, exploratory, and playful, which means that adventures can often be a frame of mind. With that as your touchpoint, think about all the new adventures you can have in a day—whether it means going to a new coffee shop or taking a different route to work, or planning a day trip to a different part of the state. This week, plan an adventure (big or small). Go adventuring and record in your sketchbook any inspiration, ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Six: Wanderlust

Challenge #6: Summer is traditionally a time for “trips” or vacation travel. What travel memories does your summer hold? Indulge this week in remembering a trip or journey that you have taken. Do you have mementos of the trip to spark memories? Consider how your travels have influenced you and/or what new travel memories you are currently creating or planning? Celebrate by indulging this week in a related foreign film, book or food, for a trip (past or future). If you write or paint of it, use all of your senses to capture the experience. Record in your sketchbook any ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

I awake in my bed in suburban Boston, surrounded by memories of South Africa. They follow me throughout my morning routine like the wispy tendrils of remembered dreams. In the shower, I can see again in my mind’s eye the golden colors of the sun setting on the mountains behind the guest house in Swellendam. With this image comes the memory of the day at De Hoop (picture above), returning, the scent of Rooibos tea in a rose-patterned tea cup, and the sounds of sheep in the yard next door as twilight falls. Brushing my teeth, I recall the dusky light and oaky scent of the cave on our wine tasting in Stellenbosch. And at breakfast, I remember the feeling of planning our sight-seeing route, and the essence of grand adventure and newness that came with the start each day in Cape Town.

I look at the July calendar and understand—it is exactly three summers ago to the day that my brother and I joined my sister in South Africa after she had finished her study abroad program there. We traveled for ten days from Cape Town to Swellendam and back, days filled with bright vibrant memories and amazing things to see, taste, experience. Every year at this time, memories of the trip float to the surface of my mind and follow me throughout the day.

These pockets of memories that emerge every year on and around the exact travel date, are not just exclusive to my trip to South Africa. In June, I have memories of Segovia, cava, the squares of Madrid, and the site of my sister kneeling on the marble floors of the palace taking pictures of the painted and gilded ceilings. In mid-August, I think of the Seine, the flowers in Monet’s garden brilliant under a light rain, and cafes in Paris. There are other trips, large and small, local and foreign, forming a veritable travel guide of memories throughout the year but the most cherished and most exotic ones seem to be gathered in the traditional time of summer wanderlust.

These memories come from a place deeper than my active conscious. I am in awe of the map of memories that is held in our bodies, and its way of saying, Hello, I know this heat, this light, this time before. Remember the taste of the freshly baked chocolate éclair on that hot and dusty street in Paris? You are a Student of the World, there is much more to you than worrying about work emails and dirty dishes. Remember that.

I like to think that these embedded memories are similar to what author Sarah Ban Breathnach calls, in her book Simple Abundance, “anniversaries of the heart.” While that term embraces, respectively, much more intimate and emotional experiences than just times of travel, I like to think that, for me, the spirit of adventure that emerges on the anniversaries of these travel dates are small times of celebration—a time to enjoy a well of exotic memories and passionate experiences, beyond the pattern of my day-to-day life.

All this is inspiration for the Sixth Summer Challenge: Wanderlust. Summer is traditionally a time for “trips” or vacation travel. What travel memories or “anniversaries of the heart” does your summer hold?

Indulge this week in remembering a trip or journey that you have taken. Do you have mementos of the trip to spark memories? Consider how your travels have influenced you and /or what new travel memories are you currently creating or planning? Celebrate by indulging this week in a related foreign film, book or food, for either a trip past or future. If you write or paint of it, use all of your senses to capture the experience. Record in your sketchbook any ideas, illustrations, or thoughts and share here on The Paper Compass.

Summer Challenge Week Four: Sunrise, Sunset and High Noon

Challenge #4: In this interpretive challenge, think about the segmented times of the summer day from sunrise to afternoon to sunset (or after). Do you have a favorite? Pick a time to observe a certain point in the day, whether it is familiar to you, such as a summer afternoon or unfamiliar, such as getting up extra early one morning to see the sunrise. This is also a great challenge to think about time as a setting in movies, books, or even your own routine. This opens the challenge up to include watching a movie this week, such as High Noon, or taking the time to listen to music such as Chopin’s Nocturnes. This week, take in your time-exploring experience with all your senses. Record in your sketchbook any ideas, illustrations, or thoughts that it inspires and share here on The Paper Compass.

“The days are fruits and our job is to eat them.” -Jean Giono, Fullness of Days

Unlike other seasons, the summer is characterized as having an abundance of hours. This comes both from the extended amount of daylight and from the often playful or relaxing activities of summer, such as going to the beach or vacation time.

Currently we are in the heart of what has been known since ancient times as the Dog Days of Summer. The Greeks and Romans believed that the sultry heat and limited rainfall was a result of the rage of Sirius, associated with the Dog Star, which is one of the brightest stars, burning in the constellation Canis Major. The Dog Days were originally believed to be an evil time of hysterics, frenzies, mad dogs, fevered men, and languid creatures.

Modern conveniences such as air conditioning, refrigerators, Slurpees, and movie theaters have helped alleviate some of the corpulent evilness of the Dog Days, but I believe that there are some oppressive and slow summer moments where you can still feel the thin veil between the productive march of modern everyday-progress and the sinister, lazy nature of the Dog Days.

While much has been written about the pleasantness of a summer afternoon, there are not many odes to Dog Day afternoons. These are the almost unbearable high hours of the day that feel like the Sargasso Sea of summer, weighted and ponderous, with time hanging as thick as the air.

It is these afternoons that are actually one of my favorite things about summertime. They are full of stillness and invite you to be aware of the things that are absent: birdsong, the breeze, shadows. For me it embodies the nature of waiting and is a time pregnant with possibilities. Walking home from the T or to the library on a Dog Day afternoon, I often do some of my best plot line and character development thinking. Often in stories (or the weather) stillness forebodes the coming of the storm, and it is a great time to think about your character when they are not engaged in action but in solitude.

Also, the Dog Days of summer sometimes evoke in me a rare feeling of restlessness and boredom. This is a great combination for tinkering or for picking up a new book. Sometimes it is also just a good time to pour a cold glass of sun tea and sit as still as the air.

All of this is the inspiration for the fourth Summer Challenge: Sunrise, Sunset and High Noon. This is an interpretive challenge, so feel free to go where you feel inspired to. Think about the segmented times of the summer day from sunrise to a summer afternoon to sunset (or after). Do you have a favorite? This week, pick a time to observe a certain point in the day, whether it is familiar to you, such as a summer afternoon or unfamiliar, such as getting up extra early one morning to see the sunrise. Explore that time as a full sensory experience. How does it feel? What do you observe about it? What memories or emotions are connected to it?

This is also a great challenge to think about time as a setting in movies, books, or even your own routine. This opens the challenge up to include watching a movie this week, such as High Noon, or taking the time to listen to music such as Chopin’s Nocturnes. Take in your time-exploring experience with all your senses. Record in your sketchbook any ideas, illustrations, or thoughts that it inspires and share here on The Paper Compass.

If this post sparked your thinking on time, I highly recommend Slow Time by Waverly Fitzgerald as a further exploration of your relationship with the hours. You can also visit her blog: Living in Season for quarterly inspiration.

Summer Challenge Week Two: Books

Challenge #2: What is your favorite summertime book or reading experience? By the end of the week: dig up, check out, find, or purchase and begin re-reading your favorite summertime book or series. The book can be recent or from your childhood. Exercise your imagination and use all your senses as you rediscover your book, its plot and characters. Record the experience, memories, and thoughts of revisiting a favorite book or character in your sketchbook and share here on The Paper Compass.

For me, summer is the season for reading. You can find me whiling away many weekend afternoons or mornings on the back porch, deeply engrossed in the imaginative activity of reading. It is not that I don’t read all year long—often, it is hard to find me without several books on my person at once. It is more that the long lazy days and evenings of summer seem the perfect permission to escape into a book.

To prove to you what a bibliophile I am, I will confess that one of the things I liked most about the summers of my adolescent and childhood were the school and library summer reading goals and the academic summer reading list. Meant to inspire kids to read, I needed no further urging and would set lofty numerical goals checking out half the books at a time, or plan out how I was going to read every book on the list. The summer reading list is how I discovered summer classics such as Tuck Everlasting and The Great Gatsby, along with many other books that now line the shelves of my bookcases.

From the summer reading list, I developed the ritual of reading classics in the summertime. While the “perfect beach read” is often eagerly devoured, I still continue to set goals to work my way through some of the classics. One of my favorite haunts in the summer before and after my senior year in high school was the Book Rack, introduced to me by my friend Crystal. It was a used book store in a dated strip mall, shadowed by a massive Banyan Tree, off of PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Packed floor to ceiling in a semi-organized fashion, the store smelled of dusty paperbacks, linoleum and air conditioning that was so strong it caused the front plate glass to be covered with condensation. Our destination was the wall at the front of the store that held used literary fiction, the volumes somehow less intimidating with their dog-eared covers and yellowing pages. This is where I purchased Sylvia Path’s The Bell Jar, Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, and where Crystal introduced me to J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories.

Another highlight of the Book Rack was that, on lucky occasion, if you asked the woman at the front desk if they had any original Nancy Drew books, she would reach into a bottom drawer and pull out a small plastic basket of the increasingly rare blue-backed girls’ serial novels from the 30s, 40s and 50s.

Back in the summers of 4th and 5th grade, I devoured my mom’s collection of Nancy Drew Mysteries, sometimes one a day, and developed a lifelong fondness for the girl sleuth. The liberation of summertime seems to echo the freedom of Nancy and her chums, racing ahead of a storm in Nancy’s roadster, a mystery just around the corner. For me and my overactive imagination, slow ordinary summer afternoons especially seem to simmer with the expectation that an adventure is right around the corner...even if it is just in the book that I am currently reading.

All of this is the inspiration for the second Summer Challenge: Books. Reading is (or should be in my humble opinion) an integral part of summertime whether it is for leisure or to pass time when traveling. Revisiting a favorite summertime book from your distant or recent past can be a great way to unlock your imagination, be inspired by a remembered character, or revisit an old favorite from a new perspective.

This week make time to visit your bookcase, library or local bookstore to obtain a previous summer favorite. Exercise your imagination and use all your senses as you rediscover your book, its plot and characters. Record the experience, memories, and thoughts of revisiting a favorite book or character in your sketchbook and share here on The Paper Compass.

I will leave you with one of, what I think, is a quintessential summertime passage from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, when Nick first meets Daisy and Jordan:

“A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags…The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few minutes listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear window and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtain and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.”