The workshop of dreams…
- crazycreatures5
- Apr 20
- 4 min read
The woods, the beautiful woods, she was walking through the woods. She was young and curious. She saw the beauty in everything. She heard the birds singing, the water in the nearby stream flowing, and the rustle of the wind moving through the new spring leaves.
Suddenly, she saw it! A giant workshop filled with everything she ever wanted to tinker with. There was beautiful paper and wonderful feather quills. There were coloured pencils, and water colour paints and every brush she could ever need. There were easels and smocks and canvases. There were paper cutters and string and glue. There were beads and felt and needles and thread. There were kilns and clay. There were huge pieces of silver and moulds and blow torches and files. There were books, oh the number of books! From floor to ceiling, everything she had always wanted to read and didn’t know she wanted to read, until she saw them. There were instruments! Every instrument she ever imagined playing, with sheet music to every song. There were microscopes and slides and cameras. There were guides and settling chambers and pipettes and petri dishes. There were magnifying glasses and waders and nets and jars. There were preserved animals and plants and pieces of rocks and crystal. All over the place, there were objects, projects and potentials. All over the floor! From wall to wall and piled up to the ceiling. And amongst them, there were ideas. It was ideas galore! She saw one idea after another, all scattered on the floor with no where to go.
One by one, everything in the workshop started to move, they came alive. She didn’t notice at first but then they were upon her. All shouting to pick them, to start with them, to address them and their needs first. She started running, but they just followed. Through the winding path in the forest she ran, around shrubs and stumps and trees and under and over fallen logs, until she couldn’t run anymore. She felt like her lungs were going to give out. She hid behind a tree to catch her breath, and she wheezed the air into her lungs. She felt her heart beating and tasted the salt from her eyes. After a minute, she thought it was safe to look. She slowly peered out from behind the tree and was again, immediately bombarded with everything in the workshop.
“STOP!” She shouted. “I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore. Stop following me!”
But they wouldn’t listen. As soon as she sat down, they started yelling and jumping all over her. As soon as she ran, they followed just as fast, leaving no time or room for herself. So, she built a wall, between herself and the things from the workshop. And everywhere she went, she would build. She did this for years. Until she realised, that she could no longer hear the birds singing, the water in the stream flowing, or the rustle of the wind moving through the leaves. Nothing was beautiful anymore. She had no passion. She realised, that the things on the other side of the wall were good. They were her friends. She needed them. But she was scared. She didn’t know how to get to them, she didn’t want to knock the wall down. Because she didn’t know how to control them. She felt hopeless and like she would never hear or see beauty again.
So, she went back to the woods where she found the workshop from all those years ago and just sat, in the woods, by the stream, at the base of a tree. She sat there for a while and realised she hadn’t really sat in the woods since she first started running away from the workshop. She tried to hear the birds and the stream and wind, but she couldn’t. She
heard nothing.
She got up and kept walking. Walking along the wall she had built in these woods years ago, walked for what seemed like a few minutes but was really hours. Until she made it to the edge. The edge of the forest, the edge of a cliff. Her toes dangled off the edge as she looked down. Down to the mighty river raging bellow….
and…
She heard it! The river! That mighty river raging! She heard the swifts as they returned for summer, she heard the wind, rustling through the new spring leaves! Beauty! She heard beauty! She saw beauty! She took a deep breath and stepped back from the edge.
“This is why I am here” she said. To take in all this beauty and to be inspired by it. To live in this beauty and see it every day. Thank you.
She looked at the wall and started breaking it apart. Everything was still there, right beside her. It never left her, she just stopped listening. They were crying as she told them to lead her back to the workshop. She was now walking together with them as they lead her. When she saw the workshop again, she saw how beautiful it was, all its potential. All the places her things could go. And so, slowly, but surely, she started organising her workshop.
