Phases aren't just for moons. Or teens.

I'm in the collecting phase of creating. The waiting phase. The wandering.

(reading Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost lets me wander in stillness)

Also the healing phase. Physical therapy. Regaining mobility through much trial.

And the internal riot phase, as national news steams my precious bodily fluids.

I wonder how the recent healthcare news will affect what I collect, how I connect it, how I share what becomes of my connected collections. 

(I love that 3-part distillation* of the creative process learned from Amanda Palmer**)

(*collect, connect, share -- find out more by reading her The Art of Asking)

(**who has a new album forthcoming)

What phase of the process are you in now? What are you collecting? What is collecting you? Photo Gabriel Jimenez.

As I collect, I find:

​A few memory words from a 2015 version of me, as I continue to figure out who I am and what I'm making:

Always this balancing act. Refining the dream. Not everything is going to be perfect, nothing is going to be. But I'm cracking at it. Trying to stay focused. On the dream.

And questions to help me (you?) refine what I'm collecting, connecting, sharing, from a 2015 Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts class with professor Anne Bluethenthal.

What is the topic?
What is the question?
What is the material?
What is the vocabulary?
What is the way we enter in?

And so begin.

Continue to begin. And begin. And begin.

Begin to discover this world, and you, through what you're creating. 

And one final memory quote:

"For a work of art to be good, it has to show the artist." Orson Welles

And so we continue to make and question and show and reify the universe.

Enjoy your current moon/mood/making phase.
Or if not enjoy, sit, notice, see it with a curious toddler's eyes.
Try to avoid judgement. Wherever you are is where you are and right for right now.

XOXO, H