Every day is a challenge - 2024 06 26

 

Acrylic ink, pencil crayon, wax crayon, pen and ink on paper

Every day is a challenge of making my way through the work of caring - all the relationships that radiate out from my singular life, situated in family, pets, research, music, art, garden, community. Making my way as I make sense of my situation on this geographic location on earth, at this time in human evolution, in this moment of an ever expanding universe. Making my way from the quotidian tasks that keep us alive to the mystery of creative works of endless repetition that allow slight variations to show themselves in moments of surprise. Understanding that my singular life is simply a particle of billions of human lives at this moment.

Every day is a challenge to find meaning, to understand the significance of what it means to be alive, to be part of humanity, to be one living organism of billions of parts that constitute a sum life on earth. A sum that is greater than its parts. And I am part of it. Everyday is a challenge to understand my contribution, what it means, it's significance, the sum of a life work that I hope is greater than the parts.

Every day I work my way toward quiet creative time - whether it is reading, writing, drawing, painting, or music. This quiet creative time uses my highest levels of concentration, attention, intuition, and focused energy. I marshal my highest value resources to spend at my art desk, my music stand, my research desk. Everything else I do in the day is enriched by this work, this work is informed by the minute changes of life unfolding throughout the day. My quiet creative time is my most precious resource and my most expensive expenditure. 

How do I make sense of the effort and energy I conserve to expend during quiet creative time? Why don't I use that precious resource to further progress on house repairs, keep up with housekeeping, invest in more elaborate menu planning?

What I have learned is that I neglect my investment in quiet creative time at the risk of quotidian task management falling into neglect, as the entropy of depression takes root. I have learned that the challenge of balancing the day to day work of caring with the day to day work of quiet creative time is the most important challenge I undertake throughout the day. 

Ellen Dissanayake wrote, "How miraculous that our mortal bodies in these inelegant actions should become the instruments for a composition of sensations that, at their best, awaken us to - or immerse us in - a reality transformed beyond anything imaginable in ordinary life." Dissanayake, Art and Intimacy. p. 3

When I face the challenge and make space for quiet creative time, I make space for a miraculous sensation, the result of my inelegant actions and evidence of activity, a modest drawing that is otherwise unimagined in ordinary life.

Two crows sit on a fence in the spring of 2024. The first crow looks back to make sure the second crow is following. The second crow looks askance out of the picture frame, questioning the leadership, looking elsewhere for answers, not in open rebellion, but not entirely convinced. Our relationships are permeated with complexity, both the interpersonal dynamics, but also the extra-personal conditions that situate the relationship in geography, time, season, species. 

As I look at and contemplate the two crows, drawing them into existence through layers of pen and ink, pencil crayon, wax crayon and ink washes, they speak to me about my experience, they visualize something about where I am in my life today. They give meaning to the otherwise baffling complexity and confusion of being human.


Dissanayake, Ellen. Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.

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