Knuckling Down

It always starts with a vivid and brief thought: a flash of an idea... a melody or a thing that makes me go "hmm..." and then it passes.

Thunder way in the distance.

Hours pass.

Life lopes.

Suddenly it's on me like a hot hand and I just know I'm in for sleepless nights and 

a heady combination of misery and ecstasy 

that won't be over until it's over.

This isn't a complaint, just an accurate account of a creative process.

It's both amazing and exhausting and I know now after all these years that the rhythm is present

and ceaseless. It's so sensual and important that everything else begs to be swatted away, "Not now, empty cupboards...go away dust bunnies, I've got to work!"

Finished pieces will come out clean and good and frequently,

any hour Orion sleeps will fill with tasks that lead to some gorgeous end.

My sleep will be unbroken and full of dreams

where I am driving to fix a problem

and I wake up relieved to be back in my conscious life.

I feel on fire in the best and worst of ways.

All this to say, I've discovered the thrill of painting portrait on leather.

Lightly tooled.

Painted with loving and certain fingers.

Jesus walks, I am freaking out.

My saving grace in this imaginative storm is my son,

who wakes me with a funny word every day, so funny that I need to write them down.

"Exercise!"

"Daddy in a Boat!"

"Cupcake Bat!"

"Mama Leg!"

"Read book now, yeah!"

"Chicken ok?!?"

He never takes a backseat to my muse.

I've found in the last few weeks his little soul has bewitched me so badly that

at night I ache to go in and wake him up just to see what he'll say,

what he'll request.

It sounds silly, but he saves me from myself effortlessly

and I find a balance struck more than before.

Still exhausted, just smiling in the midst of it all.

Love,

Sunny