I (Donis) didn’t sleep very well last night. I couldn’t go deep. This is a problem I’ve been having off and on lately, one with which I’m sure everyone who has ever been a caretaker or watches the news is familiar. I’ve become hyper-vigilant. I’m always right on the surface, aware even in sleep of everything that is going on. My mind won’t shut off. It’s exhausting.
As I lay awake, thinking about the concept of ‘going deep’ did cause me to spend some time pondering the mysteries of the universe. Physicists are on the hunt for the basic building block of reality, the smallest thing there is. The elementary particle. The Higgs boson. But for years I have had an intimation that creation is not just imponderably huge, without limit, out there, it is also imponderably ‘in there’, deep without limit. Just as there is no top, there is no bottom.
I recently read a book by Jonah Lehrer called Imagine. Lehrer propounds that daydreaming and otherwise allowing the mind to wander is the most effective way to tap your true creativity. If this is so, then I am the most effectively creative creature alive.
Lately I spend my time working on my writing, yard and house upkeep, and nursing a husband who has an injured knee and can't ambulate very well. My husband's knee will heal, and starting next month I will be conducting a 10-week writing seminar for a bunch of retired university professors, which will get me out of the house. At the moment, I seldom go out. Which means that I spend a lot of time going in. Fortunately, ‘in’ is a very big place.
