104. Proactive + Creativity = Procreativity – Prune Nourry
“What can I make from this experience?”
When I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 31, I had two simultaneous responses. The first was a dead end: “Why me?” The second was more intriguing: “What can I make from this experience?”
I’m a sculptor, and creativity is my anima. It keeps me alive. My process is instinctive, and I feel creativity in the same place I feel desire: my gut. Whenever I start a new project, to better understand my subject, I speak to experts and I do a lot of research. This is my proactive phase. I get the wheels moving, and with that momentum, I’m able to be creative. I call this process of being proactive and creative “procreativity.”
I found myself approaching cancer the same way. To stay alive, I needed to understand my illness; to make treatment decisions, I had to be informed. As with my art, I called specialists and researched everything, from surgery to chemo to cutting-edge gene therapies.
After this first action, others followed. When I had to freeze my eggs, I decided to take a camera with me. I filmed the corridors of the hospital; I tried desperately to steady the camera while on laughing gas for a procedure. I captured myself at home, shearing off my long braid. In being proactive and creative, I began to reimagine my body as a kind of sculpture. My illness was my material, the tumor inside of me the clay.
From that, I molded a literal sculpture called the Amazon—a 13-foot-tall concrete bust of a female warrior, her torso and head pierced by thousands of incense sticks, as if wounded by arrows. The day after my reconstruction surgery, my friends and I gathered to commemorate my recovery. They looked on as I took a hammer and chiseled away one of the Amazon’s breasts.
I had been transformed—from sculptor to sculpture, back to sculptor again.
– Prune Nourry
Prompt:
Reflect on a time you took one small action that led to a much greater creation.
Dee Reid
Location: Ojai, CA
About: The answer to a clue on one of my daily crossword puzzles was a foreign word that triggered a memory. Suddenly I was time traveling back to 1997, arriving on a scary mountain road in Chiapas, Mexico. Life is a journey, apparently along an eerily connected circular path.
Age: 68
Otra Vez / Another Time
Every morning I read four newspapers and complete four crossword puzzles. That’s how a retired journalist obsessed with words warms up for the day, coffee and pen in hand. Something strange happened today as I began answering this clue in the LA Times puzzle:
____ vez. Another time, in Spanish.
That’s easy, I said to myself. The answer is otra. Otra vez. Another time. As I filled in the four tiny squares, a small action, I was suddenly, as if on cue, transported to another time and place when I was exploring language and culture in Mexico.
It was a long time ago, 1997. In a faraway place beyond my comfort zone, which is how I like to travel. I had spent the past three weeks alone in Chiapas, in my second full-immersion Spanish language course in Mexico. (I had spent a month the previous year in Guanajuato.) This time I was based in San Cristobal de las Casas, a magical mountainous city where I could explore indigenous rural villages where artisans and Zapatistas lived and worked.
Though I did not know the indigenous languages, I had a decent command of Spanish vocabulary and grammar. I could read the local papers and discuss politics with the cab drivers. Now in my final week abroad, I had signed on to a small group van tour that would take me and two others to Palenque, a major Mayan ruin. I shared the van with a young couple from Spain and our Mexican driver. None of them spoke English, so we conversed in Spanish, slowly for my benefit, as we got acquainted on a long and winding road through the mountains.
We enjoyed the scenic vistas but hung onto our door handles when we navigated some hairy turns. I tried not to think about what could happen if we took one of those turns too fast. There were no guardrails. It would mean a long deadly freefall off the side of a mountain.
Just as we passengers were overcoming our car queasiness and starting to enjoy the ride, we came around a bend and saw a frightening scene. Just minutes before, an old car had lost control and flipped over on its left side and was now tottering precipitously on two wheels on the edge of a cliff. You could have pushed it over the cliff with a feather.
Without saying a word, we knew we had to stop. We hopped out of the van and took a deep breath as we approached the car. It was dead quiet. We stared at the underside of the vehicle that faced us and listened in silence for any sign of life.
A tractor-trailer had pulled over about 20 yards away, on the same side of the road. Was the truck driver a cause of this accident? Or, like us, had he stopped to help. A Good Samaritan?
The trucker walked over to us, then walked around the car. He stepped slowly down the steep slope to find something that could be used to prop the car more securely on the cliff edge. He found a large limb and used it to lean against the roof for a few seconds. Then he changed his mind, called our driver over, and signaled that he wanted to push the car back onto its four wheels on the road. That worked.
We all exhaled, still waiting for any sign of life. We walked closer to the car to look inside when, suddenly, a small hand appeared at the open passenger side window. A tiny dark-haired woman clutched the edge of the door and climbed slowly through the window. We gasped and helped her get out and on the ground.
She dusted herself off and smiled. We cheered. “Gracias a dios. Mi dios.” Exclaiming and thanking God for what seemed to be a miracle.
“Tu eres muy amable,” the woman said to us. “You are very kind.”
I knew this wasn’t over yet. I stood aside and said, “Wait. Hay otras?” Louder. Hay otras?” Are there any others?
I knew she was probably not the driver and I doubted they were driving alone.
She paused, opening her eyes more widely. “Si. Si!” she said waking up to reality. “Mis hijos, Mi marido.” (My children, my husband.)
Of course. We peered inside and found three people jammed up in the back seat. They began moving, We gently pulled out a teen-age boy and a younger girl. A small dark-haired man then pulled himself free.
We examined them briefly. Looking at eyes and ears, for any sign of bleeding. Poking their back and ribs, for any soreness or broken bones.
They all seemed miraculously intact, though the teenager winced when we poked his abdomen. It could have meant a cracked rib or internal organ injury.
Just as we were pondering what to do or say to them, a VW bug pulled over. A man emerged saying he was a medico. He looked over the teen and suggested he take him on to the nearest hospital for an x-ray. The whole family piled into the VW and took off quickly.
The truck driver had already revved up his rig and departed. That was it. End of our roadside life-and-death drama.
We got slowly back into our van and continued down the road, to visit a great Mayan ruin. I was in a daze. I felt like we had already come a bit too close to death. If we had come around that bend just a few minutes earlier, and a few miles per hour faster, it might have been us hanging over the cliff. Or worse, diving to our doom.
We were glad and amazed that the family had survived. I was struck by how calmly they handled their close call, as if they understood that death and calamity are always around the next bend. This time, we all got a pass. Another time around the sun. Otra vez.
Leigh Yenrick
Location: Chicago, IL
About: This is a poem about becoming a poet. I began writing little post-it poems just to create something every day and now I am working on collections of poems that I would like to publish one day. Not for fame or notoriety but to give back and take care of those in need.
Age: 31
Part of the Whole
I began piecing words together, on small squares Filling them with troubles, thoughts, and dreams Once-daily from prompts found, or of notions had beginning with simple subjects and streams
Then began my quest for knowledge of
Content, creativity, and form
To challenge myself, beyond, my norm
Wanting the syllables to dance off the tongue Giving in to neutrality of what I’ve known since I was young
That I am a poet. through and through.
I move as I speak with purposeful fluidity
Now I have moved passed the squares
To 8X11 sheets by the reams
Looking at the smallest of things
Through a rose-colored glass
Running at it arms open at full steam
Putting my heart online for all to see
Collecting verses scratched scraps
In a wave of inspiration
Sewing script together to make a flush seam
Not for fame but to come from the root
And to one day, give back of my fruit