laramie

My thoughts are a jumble. Creative process: how to get it done, (given that discipline doesn't work)? What is the ideal I have in mind that tells me what belongs and what doesn't to a specific work? I should comment back to sleigh about that. Did I leave my security badge in the slacks I threw in the hamper this morning? Why did the Benefits/Ownership people send this Will back to us in Annuity Services when the client doesn't have any annuities? The kitchen floor needs washing; did I promise to help move old gutters to the ReUse store this weekend, or just to help clean the old gas out of the snow blower? The bark of those trees in Accenture's park isn't auburn or shiny; it's pretty much nubbly gray. What was I thinking of? Those trees in an arboretum that Marty and I visited when we were hitching around the country back in the summer of '80? Trees in the arboretum on campus back at Wellesley? Where did I see them? Those small fruit trees were more red than auburn, but it was like the boles were wrapped with tattered satin ribbons, fraying pink at the edges. Isn't it funny how an image like that can come back so vividly? I'd like to find a ribbon that color and do beadwork at the ends, thick as leaves: malachite and peridot with touches of garnet.

Maybe I'll feel more coherent later. But that's where one kind of inspiration comes along: in creating the bookmark proposed above I'd be comparing it to a scrap of memory, choosing to include the things that help to evoke that memory, leaving aside a multitude of things that don't relate. In doing an illustration I'd be comparing the work to a vision in my imagination, or something seen in a dream; in singing I compare the sound to something deeply felt. Maybe there are as many sources for creative works as there are potential works. Certainly more potential works than those that are realized.