Reading Time: 3 minutes I was on my daily walk among the beautiful trees in Central Park, and I felt inspired to write. The trees frequently whisper poetry into my ears. I call them the Poet-trees! So I sat on a bench, took out pen and paper and tried to channel the poems… BUT it was soooo cold that my hands became two gnarled, frozen branches.  I doggedly persisted, but the ink froze in the tube and would not come out. I became frustrated and banged the ink against the notepad. Then I became furious and shook the pen violently. “Write, dam it!” The wind laughed in my face and slapped me awake. I flashed back to a day many years ago, when I was a resident poet in New York’s schools and was edging a classroom to open up their creativity and playfulness. The teacher, a rigid and overbearing person, turned to the kids and screamed: “Be creaaaaative!” We were all shocked. Hollering an order is definitely not the way to encourage and inspire people to create.   [Tweet “Creativity is a state [Read more.]