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Always In Flux

Jan 15, 2024

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Creativity can be troubling, overwhelming, confusing in its simplicity or its complexity.

It’s very much like the low-head dam near my home.

The flow over the dam is always different with as many variables as there are gusts of wind in the sky. Most of the time the flow is easily determined by weather. Rain, drought, winter freezes.

I don’t think it has ever been the same two days in a row. Within days it can go from a flow so heavy that it throws downed trees over its edge to so dry that anglers can walk its top edge looking for the best spot to cast their bait at the center of the stream.

Then it floods again when upstream the Corp of Engineers opens the reservoir’s gates, and the flow mimics a heavy rain.

The only way to know what’s happening at the dam is to experience it. Go to it, get out of the car, and watch the flow. Take the measure, weigh it against previous observations. Compare what you see now against what you expected to see. Expected to see from your experience and observation.

It’s always different. Sometimes turbulent. Sometimes almost still. Often in flux. Never what I expected.

But that’s the low-head dam. Not creativity?

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