By
Michael E. Gerber
Stimulation can come from so many places. In my case, it’s most often visual. What I see stimulates me. We live on five acres in Carlsbad, California, overlooking the ocean (well, it’s about five miles from here, so not really overlooking the ocean – it’s more like we can SEE the ocean from here, but seeing is very important to me. Because that’s how I get stimulated.) More stimulating than the sight of the ocean is the extraordinary paradise my wife, Luz Delia, has been creating here. Fruit trees of every kind. Apples, peaches, avocado, mango, figs, and so much more. And of course, this is the time of year when all of them are beginning to display themselves, with fruit beginning to speak to us with their lush expression of fruitfulness. I love to see my beautiful wife, whose fruitfulness is also displayed in such a lovely way as she moves so eloquently and creatively about our gardens, picking this, seeding that, sitting and watching, wondering what next she’s going to be called to create, creating what she last thought of, saw, (she’s also a visual!), to add to the loveliness of the world. Of our inner and outer space. Of this place we live in, create in, move about in, taste. I can’t help but smile as I think about this idea of seeing as a spectacular series of events, of explosions of color and shape. I smile because I realize that no matter how much this stimulation colors my life, or is almost impossible for my wife, the beautiful, so striking Luz Delia, to understand the feeling that lives within me all the time, every day, as my eyes speak and are spoken to by all and to all that surrounds me as I go about my way. I truly know she doesn’t understand it. Only I do. I truly know that it is impossible for me to express this visual stimulation that lives in me in any way other than the ways I’ve learned to express it, as the roundness, the fullness, the diverse and extraordinary lushness of the visual world consumes me, enslaves me, stimulates me, to create. And that’s the point of this blog, I suppose. To simply share with you what goes on inside of me as I live in this world. Because, by sharing it, by sharing myself, I might help you to discover something you’ve perhaps been missing. That you’ve perhaps been under-appreciating. That fullness, that explosive excitement that lives within you. Explore. And tell me about it. And have a stimulating day!