Creating is Like Breathing

There is an inhale (inspiration) and an exhale (expression) in the creative process. These days I teeter between gratitude for the beauty of the world and sorrow for all that is lost along my journey through this life. And that instability is affecting my creativity.

I know that no one gets through life without losses of one kind or another. But I’m feeling a need to find a little bit more beauty and joy to balance all of the loss. Lately I feel as if I am counting losses like a warrior counts coups.

So today I am focusing on what I say yes to and what I say no to. Creating photos is a bright shining yes that illuminates my soul. Spending time with family and friends are other bright yes’s along with reading poetry, reading in general, and making art. Meditation is a quiet, lifeline in the dark kind of yes that helps me to stay more present through my days. And most days writing is also a yes for me. But I’m feeling the need to take a little break from writing for a little while. I’ll be back writing this blog in a couple of weeks but right now it is weighing in on the no side of the scale.

Rebus

You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.

Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.

This rebus – slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life –
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.

The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.

How can I enter this question the clay has asked?

Jane Hirshfield

Meanwhile I intend to immerse myself in making photos, learning more about photography and maybe even pick up my paintbrush and make some watercolor paintings, a yes that I’ve neglected for far too long.

In my photography I’ve been playing around with

Intentional Camera Movement

and multiple exposure photography more and more. It’s a way of exploring new things about making art through the lens of my camera. And I’m loving it. I want to explore it more deeply in the coming weeks.

Along with exploring how to express what I am feeling through ICM I am also exploring how making photographs helps me to express my feelings on any given day. As making photographs is a form of expression I would like to explore expressing more emotion and more of the questions that we all face in life through the photographs that I create.

Wishing you joy in your life, breathing space, and the comfort of loving friends and family.

May you walk in beauty.