Jubilee's Jottings

        Creativity is the creation of thoughts. It is the making of ideas into reality. Creative work does not need to be a painting or art of any kind. It can be the way you write something. The answer you give to someone. The note you write to a friend. The way you spend your vacation. Creativity is not a box. There is no line where something is “less creative.” Creativity is about letting yourself run free. But we are used to boxes. Theoretical boxes. “Thinking outside the box” is too abstract to comprehend. Creativity is about doing something a little differently from the way you normally do something. Unlocking creativity can be hard. To be creative, if you have an idea, do something about it. If you want to be more creative, act on your second or third thought instead of your first. If all new is too hard, just try a slight variation. Every creative action comes from a carried-out thought. Every creative thought comes from deliberate rumination. Creative thinking comes f

       Color is mystifying. Shades of color harmonize perfectly, are a little off, or definitely do not go together. One person’s working definition of matching may be vastly different from someone else. Matching colors vary with country and culture. The appropriate color for girls and boys varies with it as well.      A Thai’s matching outfit combines shades and different prints of one color, like pink. The unifying point of the outfit is that it is all one color, never mind big and little flowers. American matching is colors that are commonly put together, like blue and gray, or black with pastel. Chinese outfits often have both red and yellow in surprisingly harmonizing outfits. Boho styles take a whole new spin by combining unlikely colors in colorful and beautiful prints. In Asia, pink is a boy’s color as much as it is for girls.      Color is also therapeutic. Green and blue are almost always soothing colors, and varying shades of other colors are also calming. Unless

            The pounding rain is seeking to undo the morning’s inches of snow. Howling wind dries the puddles in preparation for a cold, winter night. Branches sway, light posts teeter, yet the sun still shines. A lull in the wind reveals a warm sun gracing the blustery day. The sun warms my toes in its embrace, and I stop shivering. The wind picks up; leaves swirl; branches drop from their arboreal abodes. The warmth is hard to feel, but the memory lingers.           From the window I see white and gray clouds as they try to flee the terrestrial wind, racing past the sun in dense, gray numbers. The shivering trees look animated as they respond to every gust of the wind, quaking in its unending breath. The tall and mighty trees wobble regardless of kind or species. Sprawling oaks, slender birches, stately pines, and other trees bear the assault of the wind with equal grace. All but one tree.           The tree is 10 or 15 feet shorter than the other trees. The buffeting win

I decided to abandon my lovely desk in my room and try my hand at writing in the sunroom. This room is located a few steps down the hall, and it abounds in windows. The sun went down, presumably visible out of the West windows, its blinding rays conveniently blocked by a piece of trim around a window. The best view of the sky is hampered by a three-story apartment building just across the street from where I live. Nevertheless, I enjoy the orange and blue hues streaked with purple-gray evening clouds that mark the site of the setting sun. The view beyond the buildings is only possible in winter, when the enormous trees standing guard lose their summer visage to become black silhouettes against the skyline. To my right is the other set of windows. These ones tell the tale of the city street, peopled with cars, choked with more cars by a dealership a breath away. Car horns, engine noise, sirens, and the like mar the silence I sought in the room with a view. Brake lights line the aven