Rocking Your Imagination Alive Again: Smack Dab in the Imagination with Dia Calhoun

A few days ago, spring was finally warm enough to bring my hammock out of storage.  I set it up under the trees on the riverbank.

As I rocked, I felt how tired I was from winter--bouts with RSV and covid (yes, after three years my luck ran out in February.) The bulb of my imagination felt so dormant I doubted it could ever send out roots again. 

 I remembered the fairy tale titled The Three Golden Hairs. An old man stumbles through a forest as the light from his lantern shrinks. He stumbles on the cottage of an old woman who rocks him on her lap all night. By morning he is a beautiful child with golden hair.  

I wondered if I could rock my imagination back to life.

There is a wonderful retelling and exploration of the fairy tale in Clarissa Pinkola Estes book Women Who Run With the Wolves. This can be found at the end of a chapter titled Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life.

As she tells the tale, at dawn the old woman plucks three golden hairs from the child's head. Then the child jumps out of her lap and, after smiling back at her, runs out into the world again. Sometimes to renew our imagination we also have to let something go. Even if it's gold. That's what focus is about. To choose and to discern is renewing. 

When your imagination is tired, rock in a beautiful place. Let your mind lift and drift and let go.