I saw a bunny earlier this morning. It was an illustration actually, for an album cover, Fila Brazillia. It reminded me of the illustration for a book I loved to read as a child, an English story that had Peter Cottontail in it (Peter the Rabbit). What struck me is that seeing this illustration plucked a psychic string of innocence that continues to live inside me. I noticed this aliveness and it gave me pause. The child. The innocent. The one charmed by EVERYTHING in the world, especially the world of imagination, is awakened.
I use to have a rock outside the little garden you approached as you entered the front door of my home in northern California. When I sold the house I left the rock. Carved into it was one word, “Imagine.” This invitation and welcome guided me often during the time I remodeled that house from a scrappy shell to a landscaped and glass home nestled between redwoods, ferns and dogwoods.
Imagination fuels so much of this journey on these Waters of Yes. But not so much what I see as I look over the bow, or off to the sides, or even behind me, as what lies just beyond my current horizon. Innocence and imagination are a potent elixir of wonder and awe for things unseen.
Here’s my exploration then in a nutshell…it is SO much easier to pretend with our imagination than with what’s happening right now. One is just around the corner, the other is right here, right now. If I am to be loyal to these Waters of Yes, presence is a hallmark of acceptance of everything that is happening, right now. But if what is happening-right-now doesn’t match my imagination and vision that in many respects, fueled what is happening right now, well then, I have to question my imagination, my innocence. The vision doesn’t match the experience. Pause. Breathe.
You would think, as for many, I might have figured this out more quickly, that innocence has no place in making things happen. That imagination is for dreamers, not doers, not for people that get-r’-done. It’s not to say that creativity doesn’t serve people who get shit done. But our imagination and innocence has no utility in this right-now space. Yet, some of the most sober and realistic people I know are children’s story writers…go figure.
For me, here it was, a few moments ago, a string was plucked that took me back to simpler times…when the gap between imagination and experience was thinly separated by a veil, as easily lifted as the paper page in my tiny hands.
And now, grounded and looking deeply at budgets and schedules, deadlines and bills, action items and business goals, the veil has dropped, the song is over, the bunny album cover is in the distance.
Do wonder and awe only reside in our imaginations? Does our imagination and innocence have a place in the here and now? I suspect it is all a matter of this veil, a choosing…veil on, veil off. My small pause, an interlude for a Sunday morning with Monday just around the corner…
