Imagining Beyond and/ or Within

I got on a walk this morning. First one in a long time that I didn't feel I needed to cap the length of. It felt really good to stroll where in my neighborhood I felt like going, and for as long as I felt like. When I get on these kinds of strolls - ok, it's about to get REALLY nerdy for a moment - I often find myself thinking of a line from the season five villain of Buffy (her name was Glory, and she was stuck on earth from another universe entirely): "I could crap a better existence than this!"

Wait, WHAT? How did this musing on a glorious, late Spring/ early Summer walk, perfumed by flowering bushes and lit by burgeoning morning sunshine take a turn like THIS?

It's because the context of that humorous line is this: it pops into my head because I get thinking about how truly wonderful our human existence can be. This might sound Pollyanna, but when I look up into the big, old trees in my neighborhood and see the sunshine file through, smell the Spring smells and feel my heart pump subtly as I put one foot in front of the other, I can't help but feel grateful for being a person treading around this Earth.

This morning, this familiar chain of thought lead me to one that was new for me: I got thinking about how my imagination/ creative impulses imagine WITHIN the human experience rather than beyond it. While I don't necessarily think this is either/ or for the creativity of folks, I DO think that I tend toward expression inspired by, pondering upon and imagining what real humans do on the planet we have. While I LOVE works of art/ creativity that imagine other creatures and worlds, it is not what comes out of me.

Perhaps this is in-part rooted in my chosen artistic medium - dance - as it's base material is human bodies - people. That's not to say that there are not dance creators who develop very whimsical and non-human things - I know several personally who do. I think it's just powerful for me to realize that what really gets me going to create is what I KNOW, not what I imagine BEYOND. Another 'it's not to say': that it's NOT a part of the human experience to imagine. I think I just like to imagine WITHIN the world I know :)

Imagining within.