Imagination-Arts​ Publications

Judith Peck, Ed.D. It struck me that I was looking out at a landscape that was in these moments completely untampered with. The scene was natural, pristine, real. How unusual to feast on something, so genuine. A mist covered the trees and the lawn, a fog not yet lifted embraced everything, joining disparate surfaces and soothing their textures. The air was so still, not a single leaf fell, though it was the 10th day of October. Then at last a lone one did, cascading gently and wavering as if reluctant to fall at all. So still the air, tall trees majestically standing with their vast network of leaves immobile, as if waiting for a whisper from somewhere to summon movement. I thought about what else in my life was genuine; not a product of something else; something that was as pure, albeit far from simple like those intricately complex trees...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. How to get started creatively in the morning on the stuff no one in your world cares if you do it or don’t? You have not started, you feel despicable and cannot stand yourself. You have chores with factual beginnings and ends, you have some kind of business, you have an array of survivor tasks that bond you to the world at large, and you have loved ones who collectively gnaw. Compounding this are emails endlessly streaming in like wild dreams whose source you cannot control. Longing for a pre-online world is no solution nor is the 75 or 80 times you look out the window as if something out there can ignite a fire, or you fling open the refrigerator door to find solace in sustenance. Better keep water glasses there to sip while you count the calories of solace and close the door.) What is...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. You are absolutely right in the dispute, no question. He has inflicted a wrong-doing upon you, the logic of which is obvious. He is simply too thick-headed to see it; lives in his own world; blind to the truth; unwilling to face facts. Those are the facts as you see it, the sub-text: he doesn't give a hoot about your feelings, doesn't care about you, let alone love you, let alone like you. But there he is, claiming the exact same hard-fact complaints about you. Only the subtext isn’t there because men are trained to keep feelings un-watered—no tears—and these dry up  unrecognized as living things.) Could both of you be right? Yes, because the logic of the situation belongs exclusively to each of you and is different for each of you. That logic, which brought on the firestorm, began with a hypothesis. From that, your argument...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. Seated on my patio enjoying my lawn, I looked up and saw a young deer – teenaged in human terms – staring at me. I stared at her. Motionless, we engaged with one another until I felt a need to break the long moment. I said "hello." (Do deer talk? I have never heard a peep from them.) Unmoving, the doe took several minutes to ponder the subtext of my greeting and then loped off. She did not run, clearly signifying our equal entitlement to the greenery between us. Point made, she'd simply had her fill. But we had locked eyes, entered the small world of each other's universe and once aware, could not simply ignore each other. We were together in the moment, but we did not connect. Our intentions, let alone biology, were too different. She wanted to eat, I wanted to watch her so...

Yesterday, I had a strong desire to make a lunch date. I wanted to be social or more likely, put off further what I was putting off. I ran through the roster of candidates. Sonia was bright and informed and would love to meet, but Sonia had cousins. On any subject of conversation—political, historical, academic—she had a cousin who did that, an expert in the field and that one’s credentials would rise, burying the subject. Fran always called me to go to lunch and I sifted through that scenario. Fran was a devoted friend, smart as a whip in her job as an analyst. But that is the subject we talked about, her job as an analyst. I knew every co-worker over and under her, I knew every snipe and jab and woe and shared her exhaustion. Bonnie was an old friend and up on everything; a political wonk like...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. We Don't Go to Bed Angry, that's the Rule We don't go to bed angry, that's the rule. It's curious about rules. Rules are conceptually external to yourself and to others. Set apart from the particulars of events and situations, they stand like heavy stone pillars surrounding the tumultuous interior where emotions rein. Irate as each of us were, my 12-year old daughter and me—and I can't even remember the argument—she quoted the rule to me as she lay in her bed, her outgrown stuffed animals, not a one discarded, taking up room around her. "No, we can't," I agreed, though it took me a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed, tense and annoyed. The matter itself was not resolved and each of us knew it, an unfairness of some sort, which lay at the foundation of family disputes: favors extended to a sibling, a...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. Sitting opposite my daughter in a luncheonette after finally meeting the surly guy she'd begun living with, I made a little sigh in praise of coffee. As long as we could drink coffee together all was not lost. She looked at me and smiled, a little warily. "It was nice that you came up, Mom, I know you're busy. You really don't have to worry about me though, you know." She tossed her head as if to shake off such concern; her hair, just washed, glistened with the sunlight coming through the windows, the bright light highlighting a thousand curls. When she was little, those incorrigible curls would frolic as she danced around the living room or demonstrated her latest tricks, daring feats like jumping over two dolls in a row. Now, disciplined by blow dryers, steam curlers and curling irons, her tresses behaved. "You don't like...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. All life's passions, lofty, lowly, beatific and bodily arise from one source: Loneliness. Think sex, art, sex, charity, shopping... The desire, need, sometimes compulsion to do these things, if taken to their source seems to derive from the desire to connect with someone, to be a part of something. A sense that your self alone is insufficient in its most benign state and perhaps starved in a more extreme case when loneliness feels toxic. This is not a bad thing. We are social creatures and often do not recognize how needy we are for companionship. A good conversation—with provocative give and take, shared speaking and listening—can make you feel as fulfilled as if you'd seen a terrific play. It holds the drama, sequence of action, insights and fresh understanding that comes with good theatre but even more unique in the originality of its source. Loneliness is assuaged...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. So what was it about him that made me fall in love with him, and fall is what we do with love relationships, like trip or stumble, or roll head over heels; something precarious. It felt like an accident, surely something I didn’t plan on. Well, he was interesting; not a boring thing about him, always something new and challenging being with him. No, not that or why not go to the library and find an intriguing character you can spend a week with and then toss in the return bin? It could be because I myself felt intriguing being with him. He was so mercurial I had to keep changing right along to keep up; he kept me sharp and I must have liked that or thought I did. And he was good looking, but ordinary tall, dark and handsome, no exceptional wow components, excepting maybe...

Judith Peck, Ed.D. A feeling of happiness comes not from a state of mind but impression of the senses. Happiness enters from sight, sound, taste, smell or touch  and only later is the mind's awareness. Nature affords this nutrition for the senses, which is just as necessary for a state of well being as the nutrients of food and drink for the body. I first understood this when I was in a position to feel all five of these remarkable ingredients and in those moments was aware of an intense sensation of happiness. Sitting in a comfortable chair in an exquisite room decorated by the wife, an artist, sipping a glass of excellent red wine, home-made by the husband, while music by Prokovioff was played magnificently on the piano, I was effused with a sensation of complete happiness. I realized suddenly that this state of being, so complete in its lack...