Holy Bagumba!

What “Flora and Ulysses” Can Teach Us About Writing, Art, and Creativity.

I had the flu last week and it gave me a great opportunity to re-read one of my favorite books: the Newberry award winning “Flora and Ulysses” by Kate DiCamillo. If you haven’t read it, you need to stop reading this post immediately and go buy it. Ideally, it should be read aloud to your children no matter how old they are. If you don’t have any children, borrow the neighbors. It will be worth it. It’s that good. 

To summarize, it’s about a cynical little girl, Flora, who meets a superhero, squirrel named Ulysses. Together, they set out to fight the forces of evil (which consists mostly of a cantankerous cat, Flora’s romance novel writing mother, and a shepherdess lamp) and end up finding hope. It’s a beautifully written story full of the kind of lines you want to be able to cup in your hand and hold to your ear again and again. Like many of DiCamillo’s books, “Flora and Ulysses” is full of Christian symbolism for the reader who wants to delve a bit deeper. The goal of this post, however, is to explore what this book can teach us about writing, art, and creativity.

To start with, DiCamillo tells us a great way to come up with new ideas. Here’s a video of her explaining how she got the idea for this book:

Two things come together to form the seed of DiCamillo’s idea: a squirrel dying on her doorstep and her mother’s vacuum cleaner. This, in essence, is juxtaposition. That is, two things put together that really shouldn't be. Juxtaposition has the powerful ability to instantly force your mind to create a story. In DiCamillo’s case, she took the squirrel and had it sucked up by the “Ulysses 2000X” vacuum cleaner. Then, she needed a character to save the squirrel and Flora was born. The story just progressed from there.

I use juxtaposition as a warm up with my creative writing students all the time. Take any two things that just shouldn’t or couldn’t be together (a Twinkie on the moon, a gold fish in the middle of the Sahara, a bowling ball in a baby’s crib, etc…) and put them together and your mind begins trying to make sense of it. In short, you create a story. This works equally well with art, just look at these paintings by the surrealist artist Rene Magritte:

"Golconda" -Magritte

"The Empire of Lights" -Magritte

Juxtaposition causes us to create meaning where there was none before. We see things differently when they are out of context, we pay more attention to them. If I see a bloody knife at the butcher shop, it is completely unremarkable. If I find it under my pillow, I pay attention!

The second thing that we can learn from “Flora and Ulysses”, is that we need to let go of preconceived ideas about what is “true literature” or “real art”. In the book, Flora’s mother makes her sign a contract not to read anymore comic books. The contract says that Flora should “work to turn her face away from the idiotic high jinks of comics and toward the bright light of true literature.” I have often found myself inspired to draw or write something only to stop because I don’t think it fits the world’s definition of true literature or real art. What a load of beans! This is a sure fire way to squelch the fun and excitement of the creative process! Julia Cameron, in her book “TheArtist’s Way” says that the source of our creativity and our inner child are the same thing. Children like to play. Let your creativity play and don’t worry about whether it’s “real art” or not.

Later in the book, Flora gets in trouble for messing with her mother’s typewriter. Her mother says, “What goes on here is serious business…I am a professional writer. I am under a deadline for this novel. This is no time for high jinks. Plus, you ate a whole bag of cheese puffs.” I’m a firm believer that creativity requires both high jinks and cheese puffs. There is, undoubtedly, a time when you have to get serious. It’s called revision. Don’t get too serious too soon or you ruin all the fun. Creativity flourishes when it’s fun. If it inspires, it’s fun, and it involves the consumption of cheese puffs, pursue it!

The third thing we can learn is closely related. It comes near the end of the book when Ulysses the squirrel is forced by Flora’s mother, Phyllis Buckman, to type out a letter. She says, “You want to type?...Okay, let’s type. You are going to type what I say.” Ulysses tries to fight her, but he ends up giving in: “And then, stunned into dumb willingness, he typed every terrible, untrue word that came out of Phyllis Buckman’s mouth.” It has been my experience that when I try to write what I think other people want to read or what I think I can sell, the result is disastrous. The work is typically sterile, pretentious, and, worst of all, dishonest. Sorry, not interested. Instead, I strive (sometimes unsuccessfully) to do what Ulysses did earlier in the book when he wrote his first poem: “There was nothing he could do except to be himself, to try and make the letters on the keyboard speak the truth of his heart, to work to make them reveal the essence of the squirrel he was.” I may not be a squirrel, but my best, most satisfying work is always my most honest.

Another little gem of creative wisdom comes when the squirrel first displays his super powers. He lifts an entire vacuum over his head and shakes out a few crackers to eat as Flora and her neighbor, Tootie, look on in astonishment. DiCamillo writes “Who can say what astonishments are hidden inside the most mundane being?” 

Illustration for "Flora and Ulysses" by Kate DiCamillo, illustration by K. G. Campbell 

I sometimes find myself in a slump thinking, Who do I think I am? I can’t write. I’m no artist. Why do I bother? I’m far too boring. I have nothing worth saying. This is simply not true. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, "...remember that you are spirit daughters [and sons] of the most creative Being in the universe. Isn’t it remarkable to think that your very spirits are fashioned by an endlessly creative and eternally compassionate God? Think about it—your spirit body is a masterpiece, created with a beauty, function, and capacity beyond imagination." I don’t know about you, but remembering that I am the child of the Great Creator himself, makes me think that maybe I do have a few “astonishments” hidden up my sleeve. At one point in the book, Ulysses is in danger and Flora tells him to “Remember who you are!” and “Act!” That about sums it up, right? If you find yourself doubting your creative capacity, remember who you are: a child of the Great Creator. And, once you try to wrap your head around that whopper, act! Go create something!

Flora’s favorite comic book character is a superhero named “Incandesto”. In his normal life, Incandesto is an ordinary janitor, but, when needed, he “becomes a righteous pillar of light” and he “sheds light into the darkest corners of the universe.” The famous psychologist, Carl Jung, said that “the sole purpose of human existence, is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” Isn’t this what the best writers and artists do? Isn’t this what we should be striving to do in our work? But how? Well, it might not be as difficult as it sounds. It doesn’t have to be all profound philosophical insights. Thoughts like those might be the lighthouses of the artistic world, but sometimes all we need, or even want, is a candle. All of us may not be able to construct an intellectual lighthouse, but all of us can at least light a candle. 

"Meditation" -Magritte

One way to light our own little candle is through astute observation and a practiced awareness of our surroundings. As The Criminal Element, one of the comics Flora reads, suggests, we need to “…learn to listen carefully. ‘All words at all times, true or false, whispered or shouted, are clues to the workings of the human heart. Listen. You must, if you care to understand anything at all, become a giant ear.’” Of course, it’s not just listening that we need to do. When Ulysses first gets his superpowers, he suddenly noticed that “everything was astonishing. The setting sun was illuminating each blade of grass. It was reflecting off the girl’s glasses, making a halo of light around the girl’s round head, setting the whole world on fire.” Ulysses thinks to himself, “When did the world become so beautiful? And if it has been this way all along, how is it that I never noticed before?” We have to constantly re-learn to notice using all of the senses. As children, we had this dialed: every rock had to be turned over, every bug was amazing, and every puddle in a parking lot with an oil rainbow in it was the most beautiful and fascinating thing, ever. To Ulysses, who had just become aware of his calling as a squirrel poet, everything “became interesting.” He began to notice all the beautiful sights, smells, and sounds and he “wanted to capture it. He wanted to write it down.” That is how we light our candle: Notice and help others to notice through our work.

My favorite character is the somewhat mysterious Dr. Meescham. She is constantly telling stories about her life as a little girl in Blundermeecen as a way of offering insights and advice to Flora. One of the most important pieces of advice she offers is this: “All things are possible…When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, the miraculous happened every day. Or every other day. Or every third day. Actually, sometimes it did not happen at all, even on the third day. But still, we expected it. You see what I am saying? Even when it didn’t happen, we were expecting it. We knew the miraculous would come.” Near the end of the book, after Ulysses flies through her open window, Dr. Meescham shares another story: “It is what I love about life, that things happen that I do not expect. When I was a girl in Blundermeecen, we left the window open for this very reason, even in the winter. We did it because we believed something wonderful might make its way to us through the open window.” Then, almost at the very end of the book, she says, “This is how it was when I was a girl in Blundermeecen. Like this. Always opening the door in the middle of the night and finding the face of someone you wanted to see. Well, not always. Sometimes it was the face of someone you did not want to see. But always, always in Blundermeecen, you opened the door because you could not stop hoping that on the other side of it would be the face of someone you loved.” All these stories share a theme of hope and faith that good things will happen if we just leave a window or door open. How do we leave this opening? We sit at the computer and type. We pick up a pen and write. We pick up a brush and paint. Creativity is an act of faith. We simply hope and believe that if we work long enough and hard enough, something good will come. Sometimes it takes a while and sometimes the work that shows up isn’t the face we wanted to see, but if we keep the window open, “the miraculous [will] come.”

There are so many more insights that DiCamillo gives us in this beautiful book, but I’ll end with this one: You, too, can be a superhero! The first time Ulysses starts punching letters into a typewriter, DiCamillo writes, “In the darkened kitchen, the unassuming squirrel worked slowly. His whiskers trembled. His heart sang. Was he fighting evil? Who could say?” 

Illustration for "Flora and Ulysses" by Kate DiCamillo, illustration by K. G. Campbell 

The next door neighbor, Tootie, asks, “For heaven’s sake, what kind of superhero types?” Flora, Tootie, and even Ulysses himself questions if you can really be a superhero by writing poems. But think about it, if you define a hero as someone who fights evil and spreads truth and light, then a writer or artist could easily fit that description. Later in the book, when Ulysses is certain about his calling as a poet, he sits down to type again and DiCamillo writes, “HE WILL DEFEND THE DEFENSELESS! HE WILL PROTECT THE WEAK! HE WILL WRITE A POEM! Writing, painting, drawing, creating of all kinds, takes courage. Sharing what we create with others takes bravery. Striving to keep our work honest takes integrity. Using our observation and insight to light the dark places of the universe, takes special powers:

“Holy unanticipated occurrences!”

Sounds like a superhero to me.