This book never fails to inspire me. When I page through it, I can sense areas of my brain lighting up with excitation and inspiration. Do it, write it, make it, paint it. My brain doesn’t quite know what to do with itself when it gets that turned on by someone’s brilliant idea. It wants one of its own. It bemoans its lack of one. It can’t settle down. It roams around the bookshelves looking for snacks…Louis IV, Appalachian short stories, a pop-up book, poetry, meditation? My brain loves a surprise, an epiphany, a discovery of someone or some thing unpredictable, unexpected. And then I have to let it race around the room in a state of hyperjoy until I can figure out how to harness it for my own work. Archive for ‘Fresh Ideas’
It Words
April 4th, 2008 This book never fails to inspire me. When I page through it, I can sense areas of my brain lighting up with excitation and inspiration. Do it, write it, make it, paint it. My brain doesn’t quite know what to do with itself when it gets that turned on by someone’s brilliant idea. It wants one of its own. It bemoans its lack of one. It can’t settle down. It roams around the bookshelves looking for snacks…Louis IV, Appalachian short stories, a pop-up book, poetry, meditation? My brain loves a surprise, an epiphany, a discovery of someone or some thing unpredictable, unexpected. And then I have to let it race around the room in a state of hyperjoy until I can figure out how to harness it for my own work. Starting Over Again
March 20th, 2008
Do you ever feel you’re on the verge of starting out on a journey? You don’t know where you’re going or when you’ll start, just that you’ll go? And I don’t mean that you’ll even leave home, but maybe you’ll leave the certainty of home behind. Maybe you’ll leave the routine of home behind. Maybe you’ll leave the safety of home behind. Last week I dreamed I was having a baby. Big consternation and confusion in the dream because I’m way past the age of fertility. And knowing my past, there might have been some worry about who the baby daddy was! For the past few weeks, maybe months, I’ve been in a slough of mild despair wondering if I would ever have another adventure, another big idea, another wild goose chase. So I’ve been thinking about the pregnancy dream and about my crazy kitchen canvas and thinking maybe my baby daddy of an idea won’t come from the expected source. That I need to be open to idea pollination from unexpected places and be ready to leave a home-safe mind-set behind.
Crazy Messy Life
October 17th, 2007
I spent the whole day being angry, being late, being on the phone in conference calls, being an administrator of useless details, being a writer of memos and emails that everyone forgot as soon as they read them, being defeated by my disorganized messy life. I want to wake up into a state of mind that is as pure and intense and timeless as the calla lilies I saw growing wild in a California field, but instead I have become a pointless paper pusher, a minder of details. I want fresh ideas to bloom, but instead I’m retreading the same ground, churning up a lot of dust, growing nothing new. It’s hard to trust that I’ll find a way out of this mental cubicle I call work.Open Me
September 18th, 2007
What if … every time a flower opened in your yard there was a message inside, as if it were a fortune cookie from Mother Nature, or a nagging Earth Mother?
“You’re wearing all black again today?”
“You might as well open up–what’s the worst that could happen?”
“A little perfume works wonders.”
“Conjugate this: pink, pinker, pinkest.”
“Grafting is safe sex…I miss the bees.”
“I get to bloom once a year…you have a shot at it every day.”
“Earth worms are easy.”
“Every time I bloom, I think I’ll never be able to pull if off again.”
