The next morning I woke up at five thirty…It was still pitch dark outside. After a simple breakfast in the kitchen I changed into work clothes and went into the studio. As the eastern sky grew brighter, I switched off the light, threw open the window, and let chilly, fresh morning air into the room. I took out a fresh canvas and set it on the easel. The chirping of birds filtered in through the open window. The rain during the night had thoroughly soaked the trees. The rain had stopped just a while before, bright gaps in the clouds showing. I sat down on the stool, and, sipping hot black coffee from a mug, stared at the empty canvas before me.
~ Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel (October, 2018)
Photo: Reddit
Live & Learn 
If we looked at each day as a blank canvas, surrounded by the smell of newly brewed coffee, the freshness of the morning’s air…the tentative warmth of a rising sun – something tells me we would create far more magnificent days than we currently do (present company included with embarrassment)
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Agree!
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I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn’t come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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fill that canvas every day
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And blessed to have a blank canvas each morning.
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The blank canvas…a space that can be incredibly exciting or a gaping maw that threatens to swallow you whole if you don’t keep your wits about you. It’s all about perspective (yes, I have been a bit unsettled by my move…) 😉
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Oh. I can only imagine.
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When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.”
Tuli Kupferberg
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I’m counting on it, pal!
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No matter how long I stood in front of the canvas and stared at that white, blank space, not a single idea of what to paint came to me. I had no clue where to begin, how to start. Like a novelist who has lost words, or a musician who has lost his instrument, I stood there in that bare, square studio, at a complete loss. I’d never felt that way before, not ever. Once I faced a canvas, my mind would immediately leave the horizon of the everyday, and something would well up in my imagination. Sometimes it would be a productive image, at other times a useless illusion. But still, something would always come to me. From there, I’d latch onto it, transfer it to the canvas, and continue to develop it, letting my intuition lead the way. If I did it that way, the work completed itself. But now I couldn’t see anything that would provide the initial spark. You can have all the desire and ache inside you want, but what you really need is a concrete starting point.
~ Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel. Translated by Philip Gabriel & Ted Goossen (Knopf, October 9, 2018)
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Could we go on doing just that? Every few minutes you send another paragraph….. on and on, until I’ve read the whole book through your kindness?! 🙂
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Smiling. I am posting the highlights on my Tumblr.
http://thrive.davidkanigan.com/
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Thank You – I shall read your synopsis
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Murakami has a style I VERY much adore…. His books are genius – and one day, one day – I shall read that latest offering too!!!!
Brilliant pairing, again, David
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Me too Kiki. I’m a a Murakami Fan Boy. 😀
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Each day is a new canvas. I rise early as well to face my own canvas I paint with words.
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Yes Laurie. I too face a different canvas and face me! 😀
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Oh! I know what that’s like. My blank page as I try to get started writing.
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“Writing is the painting of the voice”..Voltaire
Haruki Murakami, Illustrates well, what Voltaire said.
Your pairing once again is amazing…and I feel as if I am there, a silent, invisible witness looking out that window, breathing that chilly air with Haruki Murakami as attention floats back to the canvas…
and what Morley said below is an exercise on expansion of the mind..reinforces that being stagnant (not the way to be) is not being still with thought, but actively engaged in thinking, and perhaps hints at this: one must use their mind for betterment of self and community…this rings true for me, it’s important to read deeply, immersing oneself in some great books that do unite community with guidelines of societal morals of righteous goodness…Community is so fundamentally important…as is individual solitude..and growth in continual development in thinking critically…
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.” Christopher Morley
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Thank you Christie. And agree with all of your thoughts.
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“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black,
because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
(Except where exposee by light!)
😉
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