Journal Entry: June 12

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I’m trying to find my pulse now.  I keep pressing two fingers against the opposite wrist, trying to locate proof of life, trying to get a sense of my natural rhythm.  I’ve started and stopped a handful of projects in the studio.  The inspiration only lasts for a couple of days or hours before it fizzles out and I toss the project aside — out of sight, out of mind, into the scrap heap.  I’ve never needed to cleanse my palate so repeatedly.  So redundantly.  So obsessively.  I’m like a person who needs to wash their hands every five minutes.

My soul wants to gargle salt water, spit and repeat.

I need something deeper burning.  I need something longer lasting.  I need a fine fire instead of bursts of untamable sparks.

I talked to a creative friend about idea making, about dreaming up ideas, choosing from those ideas and how to actually go about following through and making good the commitment to a project — for me, seeing an idea through to the end, to completion, is one of the greatest and most terrible aspects of creative work.  I want to commit myself and my hands to the ideas that sink the deepest and plague me the most, the ideas that keep me awake at night, torn between the indolence of sleep and the loud, blank pages of my sketchbook where it sits on the travel table in the front of the Airstream.  Those are the ideas that need to be exorcized, exercised, pulled out like thin threads from the silk of my mind and released into thin air.

Ideas need freedom.

In this in-between time when my own pulse seems lost to me (or rather, misplaced), it’s a time for dreaming and taking stock and building thoughtful momentum.  I grow impatient with that kind of work, I want to see the tangible fruit of my labor and I want to see it now.  I act spoilt.  I rebel against the notion that there are creative chores that hold hands with the beauty and bounty and productivity of creative work.  I cannot have one without the other.

It takes work and concentration to rise up into a space of clarity.

This week, I find myself wondering if my ideas come out of me as victims of over-gestation due to the long breaks from the studio I have been forced to take over the past couple of years.  I have a sense of being ridden under tight rein, constrained by a tight cinch.  I’m desperate to take the bit in my teeth.

Can an idea be over-mature, past a point where I can intuitively muddle my way through it, step by step, rabbit trail by rabbit trail?  Do ideas have expiration dates?  I sometimes imagine that by the time I make it into the studio my ideas are falling from me like over-ripe, wasp-bitten pears from lofty tree branches…like babies born with size fourteen feet and wisdom teeth.  The bright birth of idea and concept can seem, at times, delayed, wizened, too-grown-up.

When I tinker, play, grow and create, I want to toy with seeds that are thirsty for sunlight and rain, tiny things that hold promises of aliveness, fullness and the story of growth, development and evolution.

Perhaps the thing to do here is to step out in faith, over and over again, fight my way to the new surface of things, kick and pull past the old rot and up into the lively place of thrumming and gusting possibility.

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Sing It Down

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Rich Enough

IMG_1539IMG_1384IMG_1473 IMG_1488 IMG_1492IMG_1529-2IMG_1446IMG_1559IMG_1590These past few days, I have been rich enough to:

eat breakfast in a diner

swim in a lake filled with cold, clean water

sleep in dirt on a mountain with my girlfriends

watch the dawn start its glowing rise at 3:30AM

run my dogs through wildflowers

grill delicious hamburgers

squander my time watching a garden grow

smell roses

sip wine

listen to the bees bumble

eat strawberries warm from the vine

drive with the air conditioning on in the truck

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I am rich.  I am rich enough.

Maybe, we always have enough, even when we don’t believe it.

Are you rich enough?  How do you count your wealth?

Natives: A Guilty Pleasure

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IMG_1209IMG_1232IMG_1240IMG_1254IMG_1264IMG_1329IMG_1325IMG_1362I have a guilty pleasure, here in the Methow Valley, I call it backcountry instant gratification.  Let me tell you about it.

There are a handful of little lakes that are relatively easy to get in and out of in a matter of hours and on days when I set out to be at work in the studio…but the work just won’t stick…or I realize after a few hours that I don’t actually want to be there and I need to be outside instead…I can start out as late as 2PM, head for one of these trailheads, charge the path into the lake, fish for an hour or two, and be home again before dark.  I call this kind of backcountry excursion instant gratification because for just a little work, a little sweat, a little steep hiking, I can have an alpine lake in the high country all to myself and thereby the space I need to breathe again.

It’s a little miracle.

Yesterday, around 2PM, I realized I needed to go fishing.  I mean…I really needed to go fishing.  I popped a bag and fly rod in the truck, loaded all three pups, grabbed a snack out of the mess hall kitchen at the base and headed up and out to a trailhead where I shouldered my pack and whistled as I walked up to one of my favorite instant gratification lakes in the North Cascades.  I fished for an hour and a half or so, caught 27 beautiful little cutthroat trout, threw sticks for the dogs, listened to the birds, felt the sun on my skin and rested.  Then I shouldered my pack, pointed the dogs for home, picked a few mushrooms and made my way down the mountain again while singing the full score of the “Sound of Music” — I noticed a lot of fresh bear sign on my way in and wanted them to know I was coming.

Work is good, but play is good too…and sometimes work is play but let’s keep things simple here.  Yesterday was a play day for me and I don’t regret a moment of it.  In the studio, I am bare rooted right now.  I catch glimpses of inspiration but haven’t been able to slow down enough, post-relocation, to really delve into any ideas.  I have a last minute photo shoot to take care of tomorrow, a portrait shoot on Sunday evening, friends coming to town in the early part of next week and there is also the slight unsteadiness that comes with the fire season and never really knowing if I’ll see Robert at the end of the day or not weighs on me a little, as it always does.

After yesterday’s instant gratification excursion, I’m feeling more grounded and it’s not surprising.  I have always found that tethering myself to my surroundings, establishing myself in my new habitat, going out and reintroducing myself to the land is the best way for me to settle into life again after an upheaval.

Now let’s talk fish.  Aren’t those native cutthroat gorgeous?  What sublime colors.  I take great delight in catching large fish on the fly but there’s something so tenacious, wild and glorious about catching alpine trout.  They fight terribly hard (despite their diminutive size), take to the sky in righteous acrobatics and the way they take a fly in the first place is such a tiny, vicious and joyful movement on their part.  These guys look small and cute but they are total killers.

They’re little, but I feel such a profound, lightning tug on the end of my line when these fish take a fly in their teeth.  I find myself laughing aloud and smiling constantly while I’m fishing for them.  Their joy, freedom, fire and wildness is contagious.  Being connected to them through a long, thin line is positively electric — I know their small, important power, if only for a little while.  It’s an honor.

It was hard to leave that lake yesterday.  I kept telling myself, “Just one more.”

Postcards From Washington

IMG_0481IMG_0494IMG_0500IMG_0501IMG_0523 IMG_0527 IMG_0543IMG_0573IMG_0636IMG_0648 IMG_0676 IMG_0683IMG_0699IMG_0707IMG_0713 IMG_0718IMG_0772 IMG_0769IMG_0767IMG_0758IMG_0747The weather is lovely.  Wish you were here.

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