heavy heart

this migrating junco flew like an arrow into our patio window, and in its gray beauty, like an arrow, it pierced my heart.

slate-colored junco

still doing STILL

yesterday i had an email exchange with a friend of mine. in it, she wrote “when I hear the word Still, I think of its multiple meanings: quietness/without movement/up to now.” “up to now” stayed with me all day. i had intended “still” to have multiple meanings. but i had mostly thought about stillness. an antidote to our frenetic cultural pace. a pause in the day. still life. i hadn’t thought about still as in lingering, or ongoing. still as in “still here.” but i  am still here, seven years later, still doing STILL every day. it has always been about more than beauty or nature or a creative habit, even if it has mostly been about those things. it has also been about commitment. showing up every day. being workmanlike. not walking away or losing faith. still going. still at it. still interested. still all in. still here.

after the snow melts

i mentioned yesterday that i took a group nature walk on sunday. it was unnerving for me to take a walk, in a manner so similar to my daily STILL routine, in the company of a group. i didn’t like it. it was the fact that it was so similar to my daily ritual, yet different, that unsettled me. it was interpersonally comfortable but creatively uncomfortable. i am an extrovert. but the creative process for me is very solitary. i usually walk alone with the dog. i don’t wear headphones because i need to hear the dog (who runs off-leash).  my mind wanders. i think of nothing and everything, but mostly nothing. the dog sets the pace and the direction. if he stops to investigate, i stop to investigate. it’s meditative i guess. but mostly it is inwardly directed. it is shapeless but shaped by my own habits and intuitions. so sunday was like doing group meditation after seven years of solitary practice. i learned things from my peers. i saw new things that they pointed out. and yet, it felt…stiff. i don’t know what this says about me, maybe i’m not the extrovert i think i am. maybe i am a social extrovert but a creative hermit. in any case, these are the bits and pieces i picked up on my group walk. tomorrow, it’s back to me in the company of me.

awakening dormancy

i rarely do the same subject two days in a row. i’ve probably only done it a handful of times in the seven years of STILL. but i lost my race against the sun today–i was unable to get an image arranged and photographed before i lost the light. i had actually spent the whole afternoon attending a workshop that had all the participants wandering along trails, trying to be quiet and present with nature, and as observant and curious as possible.  sounds like boot camp for STILL blog, doesn’t it?  i was actually a participant today and not the instructor. it was a nice feeling to be a student again. one of the topics we were encouraged to meditate on was the idea of dormancy. and how we might use dormancy in our creative practices. it occurred to me as i hiked that i am pretty good at creating semi-regular periods for rest/retreat/refueling/well-filling…whatever you want to call it. but actively retreating is still active. it’s still not the same thing as going dormant. i’m still not sure what dormancy looks like in a creative practice, other than maybe physically putting down the camera/brush/pen/loom/wheel  for a specified length of time. if we use the annual cycle of a tree as a metaphor for the creative practice then it might look something like this:

• spring: sap starts to run, blossom appear, new growth emerges = creative ideas bud and blossom, project plans are made, materials prepped
• summer: photosynthesis, photosynthesis, photosynthesis = make, make, make
• fall: photosynthesis slows, sap starts to retreat, leaves turn color = edit, document, and share the work
• winter: all energy stored in roots, tree winterizes itself using antifreeze in its veins,  goes dormant =  put away the art supplies, let the next project silently gather energy in winter stillness.

i honestly didn’t know where i was going with that metaphor. i just started typing. but now as i reread it, it’s pretty interesting. i don’t know if it’s exactly my creative process. a daily blog doesn’t leave room for dormancy. but is my dailiness interfering with my ability to expand my vision, to push my sap up into the highest branches of my creative tree? it’s a question worth pondering. do any of you have a creative routine that looks anything like this? i’m intrigued.

important things

last week a friend called and said, with all appropriate urgency, that her magnolia was budding. some people understand the important things. i raced over and took a cutting. this morning i woke to this on my kitchen counter.

magnolia blossoms