- From my sketchbook writings, July 25th 2010 -

I fear I'm becoming a recluse.

Driving through masses of humanity and concrete I could feel the undercurrent of the city; pulsing like a body on the verge of a heart attack. Pumping ever harder, faster, expanding while the confines of cement and mortar fill in the crumbling chinks. It took me less than 48 hours to remember how to drive that speed, dancing through the gauntlet, slipping by countless street signs and steady ambitions. I could feel the beat ringing in my ears and the need to move faster creeping up knees.

But then I hit the open hills.

The Golden Rolling Hills of California. The live oaks whose roots sink deeper than the mountains and reach their gnarled limbs in every direction like Shiva. I needed that space. I needed to dilate my ribcage and feel nothing pressing back. I needed to throw my arms wide and feel only the sunshine on my fingertips. I began breathing slower, deeper. I turned the radio up; I sang from my diaphragm. I let the wind blow hot over my skin, rumple my hair into an unruly tumble, and eased up on the gas pedal.

And then, like water in the desert to a parched woman, I hit the Redwood Curtain.

The temperature dropped and the scent of the forest filled the car. The road was bare before me and the rivers crashed far below my tires. The trees closed in behind me and I could have cried for the sanctuary. In this time of discovering the depths of my own strength and the fragility of my own body I'm desperate for it.

For Safety

For Shelter

For Refuge

This is where I am supposed to be.

There are hundreds of miles between the voracious hustle and my heart. And my heart is home.

- 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.

From My Sketchbook, June 7th 2010

I am being utterly overwhelmed by all that is alive this very moment, just within the humble confines of my own backyard. It's as if sometime last night, when the moon was obscured by this dense marine fog and the night creatures had sought the safety of their nests, a rebirth occurred. Not some large flashy event where the stars shone down and the tempests shook, but a quiet, hidden event. One that passed in a silent strain noticed only by the mitochondria who never sleep. But it did happen. And when the winds pressed hard against the mist and light once again illuminated these soft edges, it was there.

Tiny.

Like something I could balance on a single fingernail but with a potency that saturates every life force breathing in this particular brand of atmosphere. I could see it in the slender blushing shoulders of the radishes and the plump drop of the season's first sugar snap peas. It was evident in the smallest bulbs of new raspberries, pale and hard but swelling ever outward. I could hear in the trill of the red-faced finch and in the sharp hum of the bumble bees.

I think to myself: this is why I eat, this is the whole meaning behind that base need. Look at this Life,

this pulsing,

throbbing,

chanting,

swaying,

spinning Life!

I would consume, I would be consumed, I would be caught up in this flood that dances so fast across the soil for a glimpse of eternity manifest in a single aged ray of sunlight. I would be this part, this element so carefully constructed into the great web of organisms sharing life, each interpreting and reinterpreting photosynthesis, changing the structure of energy once again. This is it. This is why. This is Life.