[Marianne]

Hi Dennis,

I was unable to see your response until now because of computer issues then being without a computer for a while. I thank you for your warm response(s). The story about the woman feeling the whole poem of Dante’s Inferno as she was reading just a part of it sounds like a rather transcendent experience/view. I am thinking what an interesting experience it would be. The only thing I can compare to that in my own experience  (I forever associate it seems) is when I was in high school I once had a dream that I was writing a poem about life under the ocean and it was a poem in three columns; I could read each column as its own own vertically written poem in and of itself but if I read the lines across the three columns horizontally across the page they also made up a poem. I woke up unable to replicate the poem(s). It was like reading one vertical column poem I also could know/read the whole poem horizontally. I have never endeavored to create such a thing!

I associate a lot as most my life is somehow imbued in memories/memoirs/personal myth, and I suspect it is my way of attempting to understand the world from the “I”/eye of the self out to the world and vice-versa. In a sense, our five senses are all we have with which to make sense of this world–oh and then add on our sixth psychic/intuitive sense and maybe sometimes the 7th might be instinctual although that could overlap with the sixth sense. It is also nice to understand the world through reading/hearing/seeing others “I’s” and “eyes” or ears and listen to what they carry in their hearts such as in a beautiful piece of music, and how a sound can be an archetype just as a visual symbol can be an expression of one. It is so nice to hear a poem recited as it is to read it sometimes.  In any case, I seek forever to relate somehow, and usually the arts and myths are the best ways I find I can relate to the marvels of life on this marvelous planet. To me, as it also might to many of us myth-lovers, it feels like myths make the world go round.

I also have purchased and worked with your and Jennifer’s and Deborah’s book Deep Creativity. I did this when the book was first released. I loved it, it was extremely helpful, and I do recommend it to anyone wanting to dig into their creativity–for whoever is wondering: whether you feel your creativity is a dried-up well, whether you feel you have had no inspiration, or is gone way too deep inside yourself, or if you have too many distractions, etc. It helps you focus on creative prompts to do. I also think this could be a good book for people who feel depressed during these times to work with–in keeping a journal one can always do the workbook in one’s journal.

` Thank you, Dennis for all your kind and detailed replies.

~ Marianne