Whatever my recent Cabin workshops Refilling Your Creative Well and Exploding Your Creativity (in progress) have been doing for participants, they've been doing a lot to shake up my creative perspective, open up new mental windows and shine light on doorways to unlock in spirit, heart, body, soul. I haven't been doing as much of the homework that I assign as the artists who signed up, but I've enjoyed taking part in our quick bursts of different kinds of making within the two-hour weekly sessions.

Below are a few first-starts I made in our Week One and Two sessions of Exploding Your Creative Well and a couple of the collages from the Refilling Your Creative Well workshops (in February/March and August/September/October 2022) that serve as compasses for the direction I want my life to be pointing at this moment.

Looking at these assembled in a row, I can see some of my tendencies and habits that could invite me to break out of those boxes (which will be the focus of Exploding Your Well, Week 4). There are words I'd like to cut, phrases I could revise and images I'd develop if I wanted to refine them further, but that's not the point. They're not meant to be finished products -- or products at all. Throwing together colorful messes helps me get out of my head and notice what I'm noticing, which helps when I'm gathering material for big new projects as I am now.

Whether or not you identify as an artist, may you find time, energy and materials this late fall and winter to scramble up text, images and colors (and then some). May that help you look at your world in different ways and surprise yourself.

He eyes me from bicycle seat
looking backward riding forward
startled with our eyes meeting.
He didn't expect me to catch him.
His pupils flame up.
His skin evaporates.
This is him disappearing,
the phantom on mountain bike pedaling from YMCA
trying to stare and nab me to spirit world.
I don't avert my glance.
He stops mid-track then veers away.
Brown hair whitening, black skullcap pixelating,
he fades on resumed path to ageless night, forever wandering.
No one else saw him.
He didn't want anyone else to see him.
He didn't know he wanted me to see him.
Now I can't unsee the flickering exit to another world,
dance blinking overhead.
He spirals into non-being
but all around others like him trace the sky,
little blips on earth's surface,
little suckers at the bottom.
They fly and as I watch them soar I feel sleepy
nodding off on my way to next life.

I entered the sun like getting on a bus

But first:

A flight to highest atmosphere
above earth
circling clouds
I, satellite
drop back down

This the daily practice:
Rocket up, aim for sea

This the job:
Train for sun ship

My first try I miss water
Hit sand's edge

My trainer doubts I'm ready
I prove her wrong

In transit now

These days we enter the screen itself to chat
3D conversations across solar system
Immersed in web like suffocating flies
But how else to connect?

Nearing destination
Everything is now/then/next
I see forever at once
Our star flares, timelines unite

I wait on floor lying down
knees up
legs triangles
Remember future:

I ate our sun like a spoonful of potato leek
Light entered me

This was training
This was dream
This was real

Heat protruded
through fingertips, toes

Everyone said I looked brighter in spirit
I felt heavy, bound
Sweating gold flame

This is tomorrow
Next year
Never

The moon swallowed the sun
Swallowed me

This never happened
This is happening right now
This is happening to you

I entered the sun
Entered you
Entered a time when everything was love/kindness/truth

Entered a lie
Entered our future
Entered our dreams

earth's torso a hot beast in august
scorched and pregnant
her feet want rest
with ice packs underneath
but she's up over there in her garden
worrying over silver buffalo berry
and curlicue sage
her nursery hours never close
mother of a million young-old-ancient darlings
arctic whales who live beyond two hundred
thousand year old trees
flies who live an eye's blink
all on her watch
as nanny-mama-hospice worker
as we throw grass at her and stamp our feet
as we rip her apart
she's planting new green
her aching spine
weathered hands
scattering red hot pokers now
and snow-in-summer
her cloud dreams pour floods
that drink are drunk and wipe us clean
so she might find a nap
but it's always sowing-washing-harvest season

as time rolls into ink on my fingers
betraying my eyes' dark spots
from lost sleep spinning on to-dos
so you too dear mother: be still
among your hummingbirds and mint
burnout's not worth your sweat
someday all of us will fly
to the middle of sun
we'll raise tired arms
and dive toward flame
someday I'll just be a playwright
someday a pile in the ground
ashes blowing all around
someday I'll grow up past my face
and be a stronger version of me
someday I'll carry a stack of books in prairie jeans
and drop half of them
and my little brothers
will help me restack
they'll do a messy job
and I'll throw their bindings up in a roar
and they'll build a castle of words
in a world with giants and small folk
some are magic
and we all need a timeout

In February, for the first Refilling Your Creative Well workshop at The Cabin, we created medals for ourselves, wrote the ceremony speeches and presented ourselves with our awards, as inspired by Andrew Simonet. Below is my medal and speech.

This medal is for Heidi, for enduring the little things.

For sustaining at her everyday job when she wasn't always sure she wanted to be there on campus, rules changing moment to moment, frozen bike rides, students absent more often than present, in two worlds at once: Zoom and in person, coworkers going maskless, policing students on safety, getting Covid and working from home while sick, exhausted, depleted.

For learning a new class, a new system, a new platform and modality every semester since spring 2020.

For showing up. To the email inbox. Oh that dreadful box of doom. What will today bring? A mini-heart attack with every open. And the eye twitches! Good gawd. After six months of online classes, she didn't think either eye would stay still again.

This medal is for Heidi getting students to laugh, cry, spend time with each other, offering every flexibility possible. And whenever she could, she gave herself time. To write. To be. And one Sunday every few months to do nothing at all but be human. She learned not to work or take meetings on Sundays. Learned from her panic attacks, from days she felt as much aversion going into the classroom as she did on her worst years in high school. She stopped checking email after 6pm. Started checking once a day, even -- at least the personal email.

So this medal is for Heidi. For learning to love herself a little more. Learning that she needs travel, creative well being and a supportive community to sustain her. And declaring that she's gonna make smaller steps to get to those bigger goals, dammit, because
each day
each day
each day
a little something is possible
a tiptoe
ounce
atom
of forward movement can be made
toward giant impossible dreams.

So this medal is for Heidi. For going after joy.

The peaks jagged, barely visible behind mid-morning fog and clouds.
Ghost crests' pine green through grey drizzle.
We taste the air, misting droplets sizzling around.
Hard to know what direction they fall from, or jumping from below?
The conifers house ravens who shout to each other
across the street and amongst their branches.

We striding holding pack straps in our hands,
keeping as much weight off our backs as we can
on our trek to see Mendenhall's river of ice
before she disappears forever.

Feet sore, dressed in layers,
glasses, hats, fingerless gloves for me
in hooded sweatshirt and windbreaker,
a hat and sweatshirt for Thomas,
yellow rainjacket stuffed in his pack, sweat on his brow.
Or is it rain?

Side by side down the road.
We don't talk much to keep our breath,
except noticing aloud what we see.
My legs ache from so much walking.
I know Thomas is in pain beside me.

Highway pines and deciduous leaves reach up.
Bald eagle soars overhead, who Thomas points out
as the raptor shines in front of emerald giants.
Our skin chills and perspires in humid damp.
Mountains, mountains, everywhere, but also wet
throughout the greenhouse of Juneau's west side.

Our focus on the triangular summits ahead,
between which we glimpse a wedge
of white and blue -- a segment of glacier miles ahead.
My hood up over hat, glasses rain speckled.
We tread forward on the roadside.

Been in the midst of a big rabbit hole project this year I never anticipated with this cycle of centuries. What is a century? Most basically, a list.

This collection of lists is becoming a novella of a book, a shadow box, a podcast. Learn more about the process through the MFA at CIIS Artifact Podcast where this month they devoted an episode to my process completing this series and trying to represent that visually with a shadow box.

This weekend on Sunday (May 1) at MING Studios in Boise, I'll be reading from this series for the first time. If you're in Boise and want to hear, I will begin at 7pm through MING Studio's 7o'clock series. Sometimes they lock the doors right at 7, so get there on time :) It's $7 if you're not a member (and if you're an artist, you can be a member for $13 a year!). A lot of the stuff will be raw and vulnerable, freshly typed, so friendly faces please, for this work-in-progress reading. Thank you!

Maybe I'll see you there. If not, you can check out some of my process below and the podcast to learn more.

The rushing Payette, gentle roar by the shore.
We sat on wide boulder,
low sandstone flat at our feet
displaying our black Rubbermaid plates, containers, bins of food,
brought out one at a time.
Mountain pines stretched all around.
The day in high 60s
but a breeze asked me to pull up my sweatshirt hood.

Pale sky, trace clouds.
Greens, strawberries, crackers with chevre,
a yellow cheese that bit back
and tinned oysters.
Blackberry bubbling drinks rested on river rocks unopened.
We watched the ants watching us,
pools of sugar sand circling round stones,
the sap and water scents infusing life in our bones.
Kayakers waved paddles by.

On mountaintop, grass dried underfoot.
I reached the height of one landing
and knew the climb continued far above.
I craved a hike deep into wilderness,
to walk on and on to forever.
Our red Prius pulled into a temporary spot.

Tiny saplings emerged on the ridges,
bright needly tips shot up just in time to greet us.
On one side, thick brambles of conifers, aspens, huckleberry shoots, reeds.
A rocky soft hill descended steep down the other.
And up above this plateau with fresh open land for wandering,
ATV treads dug in from beyond
leading up to fire pits, fresh burnt logs, still smoldering.
Across the road, another peak raised giant.
Cars motored past in quick succession, short bursts of quiet between.

Anytime we leave the house
it doesn't seem like anyone else is isolating.
Traffic doesn't die.
Lycaenidae and Pieridae flutter by too,
black with orange wing tips, white with blue specks,
damselflies with translucent pixie wings.
I step up on a log, a stump, aged, cracked,
to see what's below the surface wood,
leveraging out the spaces under crevices,
wanting to hole up inside.

Of course the leaves. The wind moving leaves. The burble in my stomach.
Breeze. Breath. Smiles. Footsteps. A soft creak. A chair adjusts.

Sink into this spring evening, waving like a syncopated drum.
Songs of silence and motorways.
A little finch pours in her child's lullaby.
Feel whispers of hope in high waters.
A river gushes, rushing fast bubbles that wash willow tree trunks.

We're all spiraling together.
The flagpole squeaks. Motorcycle revs.
And yes the air currents through lavender bushes, through maple, oak, aspen.
Everywhere singing birds in their own notes and keys.
Some steady, slow, some quick, high pitched.
Everything green. Everything vibrating. Everything the river.

Years ago, the river at its high point closed the greenbelt,
so I took a different route home from teaching on my birthday, on my bicycle,
and Dr. Alluri ran into me in his night blue sedan.
I wear a helmet now when I ride.
I look all ways with more caution, more of my dad's fighter pilot sense behind eyes.

A wavering melody creeps in:
violins, ragtime accordions, silent film pianos unseen,
as though some invisible composer
designed a cinematic soundscape for this moment.
Across the way, thundering booms hard to distinguish.
The traffic stops and starts in spurts, but constant.
Kids yell in a tunnel.

I tell myself hush. Tell worries quell.
Some bicycles creak, their spokes sputter. Some run clean and flow.
Footsteps on brick, on concrete, on wood steps.

My dad wasn't always a great listener but he was quiet most the time.
He allowed space. Didn't interrupt. Didn't not talk over me.
He waited, that patience that boiled my organs
when I wanted something now.

A whistler soothes me with her lips.

Alone time: scale rocks, run impossible sprints.
Write with all my senses, limbs.
With my own pace, clock, rhythm. Trust that.
Spend weeks, months, years lying in wait, envisioning my next feast from my cave.
Then it's time to act, to launch rocket in belly.
The taste of my craving. Locking sight on her there.
Embrace, attach, drag my target up cliff face to a spot safe from vultures, jackals.
Engorge, rest.
Resume slow.
Dream my next fierce outcome.
Stealth, quiet.
In silence, listen to the orchestra around us in this mountain land.
Tiptoe, keep clean, everything arranged as I like. Or I get ruffled.
Always watching, preparing the next big leap.
Waiting with whole-bodied attention.
Inside I growl and bellow -- and sometimes outside. Mostly I seem calm.
Hiding in splendor home, creating bizarre fantasies about all of you.
Examining differences between the world and me, measuring the limits.