Sunday, January 6, 2013

Ready the Till

I don't know what I want to write about.  That's a beautiful thing.  An opportunity.  A commencement.  Pomp and circumstance.

It's a new year.  2013.  A new way of living.  A whole new world, out of the ashes.  This long strange trip continues, in spite of the grand proclamations of its demise.

As do I.

It's easy to take this time and look back on the year just past and project into the near future.  We always seem to do it.  What did you like and not like about last year?  What are you planning to do differently?

I have often begun the year with a flurry of written activity.  There was a time that I set goals of production for myself-- I seem to remember a goal of a hundred pages of writing and forty drawings.  Didn't happen, but it was ambitious and optimistic.  And I was producing a lot more art those days.

I had the idea that I need to relocate to an "artist's community" the other day.  Like in the last week.  I was thinking of some place that has a lot of talent in the community and nurtures its artists.  Perhaps that is just something that my community needs to do for me.  Maybe if I practice more, get more active, and start producing art, the community will respond.

I have a lot of raw material for art production.  Bits of collected metal, some gnarled, some rusted.  Lots of different grades of material, from chunks of steel to fine wire.  I also have a fair amount of scrap wood, and a floating assortment of screws and nails.  I tell ya, there's something brewing here.

I always have big plans this side of Christmas, in my head, for next year's decorations.  I want to try and win an award or get some press.  I'm an attention whore.  I want to work towards something beautiful that others can enjoy because I brought it to be.  That's the way of the artist.  Sort of.

So this morning I popped the top on my laptop and got moving on the writing.  And I feel like I got some of the plaque of the walls of my intestine and the soluble fiber is producing something.  It's time to get regular again, with this writing.  With this artistic stretching and groping for meaning and beauty.  There's ground to turn, worms to feed, seeds to sow.  I hope to be here even more than I was last year. 

And I want to have a more productive garden, too.

1 comment:

Deb said...

I, too, want to be more productive this year. To some extent I have, but as the days slip by (it's the 6th already?!?!), I find I'm not where I wanted to be by now. At the same time, I have done things I didn't expect to do, but have enjoyed nonetheless. Keep writing, creating, and enjoying. Love you.