The studio has never looked brighter (or greener.  I can not stop purchasing house plants.  Today I stopped by the nursery for a bag of cactus potting soil and came home with a rex begonia in shades of fiery pomegranate and a fern whose tag said only "Mother").  My head has absolutely been brimming with new ideas, bubbling over faster than I can even record them.  However it's a funny space (my head, not the studio that is); my imagination is at a full gallop with imagery in paint, on stone, on leather, on canvas but as soon as I try to reach out and grab just one of those thoughts, the vision dissolves like a mirage.  I can no longer see the piece as a whole, just tiny details.  Random bits.  My pencil seems blindfolded when I set it to paper.  The concepts are so strong in my mouth, but translation falters before my eyes.

Yesterday I wanted to call out to the heavens:
"It's a sticky place to be in, my darling muse.
Sweep away the curtains!  Let me on with my business!
Chop chop now, quit your heartless teasing and give me my sights!"
(except insert a few saucier words of your choosing)

I've pressed on, but it's been one of those weeks where entire days in the studio are lost to a slip of the leather shears, or [multiple] two hour drives working out the details of what our future looks like, or kitty boys who teach a neighbor cat a lesson, resulting hours spent at the veterinary clinic (my Thai!  My little bruiser has a shaved neck and a drain that requires cleaning every so many hours but he is a trooper like none other, demanding food sacrifices for his valiant behavior.  Also, for the record, the other cat leapt into our yard - our boys are never allowed free wandering!).

At the same time, there has been writing, photographing, tooling, painting, drawing and all manner of just looking.  But as of this very second, nothing I'm ready to show.

Sometimes the ideas come so easily I forget about the struggle.
Sometimes I don't trust the fast ideas and often, when ship sails smoothly along I miss the struggle.  The wrestling with unpracticed imagery, the discomfort of stretching into a new concept, the ache of potential failure.  It's like the burn in your calves when the hill is steep, the fire in your lungs when the trail stretches farther than you've ever run before.

It hurts.

I feel as through I'm acquiring creative stretch marks.

But I asked for that growth, and I went after it with gumption.  So here's to believing with every fiber of my being that the struggle reveals the answers, that the pruned branch bears the sweetest fruit.

Here's to the struggle.

- From my sketchbook writings, July 8th 2010 -

How is it that I lay awake at night, mind rustling with a thousand ideas, rich and thick with inspiration, and the very next morning feel hollow, riddled with existential crisis?

I am HERE, I have the place, the physical space, the time, now

Oh Great Muse

WHERE ART THOU?

I'm ready to sacrifice all those banal needs, to bend my back the yoke, to plow that great field of my soul. To till that fecund soil, to unearth a glittering gemstone, hold it up to the sun and allow the rainbow of refracted spirit to fall upon my upturned face until my eyes water and weep with the honesty of it.

LET IT RAIN.

I'm holding my modest vessel with outstretched arms, outstretched palms, whirling like a dervish for that downpour.

Call my name, I'm listening hard.

Dazzle me with light, my eyes are wide open.

Direct my hands, my fingers are willing.

Just whatever you do, I beg, I plead, don't leave me in darkness. For I can not abide the nothing.

****************************************************

We wrestled yesterday, she and I. And in the end, she dropped a corner of her veil and the light shone through, illuminating certain lines drawn deftly in my sketchbook, certain hopes written only across my heart, and certain fears which seem so great in dusk but lose their potency in the watery light of dawn.

Now this morning she whispers my name, and I realize all over again: these ideas come from my very soul, they will never be lost so long as I am present. They will never be forgotten so long as I keep looking. They will never disappear so long as I am alive. They are in me. They are of me.

And so I work.