I can't sleep…
Thirty years ago, I was remembering, an eminent writer had given me some unsolicited advice.
Just look at an orange, she said.
Go on looking at it. For hours.
Then put down what you see.
– C. P. Snow, Strangers and Brothers: Last Things
Photo: anka zhuravleva
“In the old days, my thoughts like tiny sparks would flare up in the almost dark of consciousness and I would transcribe them, and page after page shone with a light that I called my own. I would sit at my desk amazed by what had just happened. And even as I watched the lights fade and my thoughts become small, meaningless memorials in the afterglow of so much promise, I was still amazed. And when they disappeared, as they inevitably did, I was ready to begin again, ready to sit in the dark for hours and wait for even a single spark, though I knew it would shed almost no light at all. What I had not realized then, but now know only too well, is that sparks carry within them the wish to be relieved of the burden of brightness.”
–Mark Strand, from “A Letter from Tegucigalpa” in Almost Invisible: Poems
Notes:
There was nothing I wanted more than a grilled cheese sandwich, and I ordered it with a coffee. I was so looking forward to a really cheesy one—a grilled cheese sandwich just oozing with cheese. I thought about it as I waited, then accepted from the man at the counter a white paper plate, with a sandwich wrapped in foil that was white on the outside and silvery on the inside to keep it really warm… I eagerly unwrapped the sandwich, but when I bit into it, it was soggy, and there was almost no cheese. It was not what I wanted, not what I had been picturing, but I adjusted myself to the reality of it. Better to have a good imagination than a good grilled cheese sandwich, I told myself.
~ Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?: A Novel
Photo: Everybody Loves to Eat
I contacted a well-known artist to discuss the possibility of drawing lessons. As a child, I used to draw all the time. It absorbed me completely. At some point, writing replaced drawing and what had once been second nature (drawing) became foreign. But the urge to draw had remained. I missed its simple and primordial pleasures…
When she asked me why I wanted her to teach me drawing, I replied, “Sometimes you just want to sit back and be led.”…The artist peered at me thoughtfully for a moment. Her blue eyes were clear and perfectly lined with kohl. Finally she spoke, with the hint of bemusement. She said the students who came to her were always full of hunger. They were seventeen-year old aspiring artists and eighty-five-year-old retired businessmen. People of mourned, mislaid, or unmined creativity. Their yearning was like the white puff of a dandelion. All she had to was blow gently and watch their creative spores lift, scatter, and take seed.
~ Kyo Maclear, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
Notes:
“Insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.’
That’s writing poetry, but hey, it’s also getting out of bed every morning.”
– Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey, Collected Lectures
Notes: Mary Ruefle Quote: Austin Kleon. Insanity Quote – Albert Einstein. Photograph: Stephen Shore – Uncommon Places via this isn’t happiness