Dear Somebody: Living with a duckling.

My latest illustration for Issue 62 of Uppercase Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

I wake to the sounds of a duckling quacking. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s midnight; there are no bodies of water nearby. After a minute, I realize it’s F; the sounds are coming from my child. On the monitor, I see her balled body rolling around the crib, quacking. The quacking continues, then becomes laughter—until finally, it’s tears. I change her diaper, I sing her a lullaby, I crawl back into bed and wait for her to sleep. When she finally does, it’s 4:30 in the morning. 

The quacking has gone on for weeks now. I stand at the kitchen island, too tired to think. Instead, I give myself over to the mechanics of morning routine, grateful for a chance to turn my mind off. When I decided to become a parent, I never thought I’d find myself caring for a duckling—but here I am. This is what commitment is: caring for the one you have, regardless of whether they are who you imagined them to be.

I’m smearing sunbutter on toast when N runs into the kitchen. She’s having breakfast on the porch with T, watching rain fall from the open sky in sheets. Mom, she says, do you want to join us? I do.

On the other side of the front door, the earth takes a long bath. The air is pleasant, cool. Lightning flashes; I close my eyes and see its brightness through my lids. N counts the seconds until thunder follows. Mom, she says, I love sitting on the porch. I love watching the rain. I’m sitting in the middle so I can be next to you and dad…at the same time! Isn’t this air is so fresh? It’s my favorite thing. It’s my favorite thing, too— being a witness to the earth. Seeing her recycle whatever resources are left, beginning again.

In a past life, I’m still in the kitchen. Still making lunches. Still stewing in my own tiredness. Still longing for silence. In a past life, I opt out of this moment entirely. How lucky, then, to be in this life instead: one where there is a porch and it’s covered. One where the rain perseveres—is relentless, even—and I, with my two very good friends, get to watch the world as it is reborn. 

One floor above us, while the rain drapes her in its song, a little duckling quacks in her sleep. 

TUESDAY

Dear Library deal announcement. Note: this artwork isn’t from the book!

I feel so lucky to share that my debut as a picture book illustrator will be DEAR LIBRARY, a love letter to libraries--and a celebration of the possibility that lives inside books. As a child, I went to the library multiple times a week with my family. My sister and I would lay on the floor of the children's section, reading, for hours. Every now and then, my mom would come collect us and we'd send her away. We were never ready to leave.

I still go to the library a couple times a week, now with my own little gremlins in tow. We come home with a big stack of books and read wherever we can: at the kitchen island, at the dining table, on the living room floor, in bed. We read in the car. We read while walking. I tell N that possibility lives inside books: a book can change your whole world. It can free you from much of what restricts you—especially your own mind. 

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I first tried to make a picture book 6 years ago, but it didn't work out. Sometimes that's the way things go. I didn't want to admit it, but I wasn't ready. I had a lot to learn, mostly about myself. I needed to be real about what I was willing to change—and what I was willing to lose—in order to create the work I wanted to make. I've spent the last few years focusing on myself and my craft. I have a long way to go; I think every artist feels this way—but now, I've got my head on right. I listen to myself. 

When this project came along, I knew it was a sign—life’s way of confirming that if I stop ignoring what’s inside my heart, I’ll be all right. And what a dream project it is: A book about books!—About libraries!—Written by my dear friend! I'm so grateful to Emily for keeping our dream alive, and I couldn't be more thrilled to work with the wonderful, gracious team at Candlewick. We're making a beautiful book together…and this time I'm ready. 

WEDNESDAY

I’m almost done with Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, a beautiful novel that asks the reader to reimagine what a family is and how a family comes to be. 

I’m listening to a lot of compositions by Joe Hisaishi while working on concepts for Dear Library and while writing. Hisaishi is best known for scoring almost all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and his music elicits feelings of mystery, contemplation, and peace.

I’m studying the composition and light value in Kaatje Vermeire’s gorgeous work, especially in De Vrouw En Het Jongetje (I have the French edition). I find her work astounding. It encapsules all of the dualities I admire in life—beauty with darkness, deep emotion and deep voids, danger and light. 

THURSDAY

On the value of creative suffering:

“I used to really believe in the creative value of agony and I don’t really know if I can subscribe to that anymore. That old idea that if it wasn’t painful then it wasn’t meaningful.

It’s a stereotype that we’ve been sold, even in the history books. The anguished genius. We’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s some kind of relationship between the creative life and dysfunctional mental health, that somehow there’s kind a correlation between the two. I don’t subscribe to that anymore because it’s just too exhausting. I’ve become really good about delegating and organizing my time. When you’re just an artist floating out there in the ether you’re made to believe that you have to create great art through pain and suffering. It isn’t true.” 

—from a The Creative Independent interview with Sufjan Stevens

FRIDAY

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

—Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich 

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: A Love Letter to My Creativity

My latest illustration for Issue 62 of Uppercase Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

For Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine, I wrote a love letter to my creativity. I’ve wanted to write this for years, inspired by an old friend who wrote a letter to her own, but I never did. I didn’t make time for this beautiful exercise, and I know why now: I couldn’t write a love letter to my creativity because I didn’t have love for it. Where there should’ve been a commitment to nurturing and protecting my creativity, there was resentment—for the artist I wasn’t, and the art I didn’t allow myself to make. 

The past few years have been clarifying. Instead of burying my creativity six feet under, I used them to hibernate—to practice listening instead of talking, observing instead of performing, and exploring instead of sharing—to practice practicing, for myself, for my craft. For my creativity. 

The reward is a diamond. It isn’t flashy. It doesn’t look like a glamorous, shiny gemstone I can flash around or make reels about. I have less to show, there is less garnering of attention, and not much of me is left at the end of each day—but the diamond itself is real. It took years to unearth, and now that I have it, I know I’ll protect it. The diamond is greater confidence. The diamond is a belief in myself, in a knowing that I can create my dreams out of whatever I have around me. The diamond is a genuine love for my creativity—one that makes the process of writing and drawing fun, challenging, and, quite plainly, delightful. 

TUESDAY

View fullsize

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“When I first became a mother in 2020, I was enveloped by the notion that I shouldn’t lose myself to domesticity: to motherhood, to my family, to my home. I didn’t want my creativity to evaporate; I loved my work and career. I wanted a clear work-life separation, I wanted a studio where I could deposit my thoughts, I wanted a room of my own. I felt a stark separation within myself—one where the artist in me perpetually fought to step out from under the shadow of the mother in me. As a tide slowly retreats from shore, my creativity, too, waned—but with no promise of return.

When I decided to have another child, I knew I’d have to approach myself differently. I couldn’t carry the resentment of not being enough—or the self-imposed pressure of keeping my career life cleanly separate from my life as a mother. I needed to redefine what my work meant to me, and I needed to redefine where creativity lived. Instead of seeing my work as a vessel for my creativity, I spent the year shaping my creativity into the vessel itself: I wanted it to live everywhere.”

—An excerpt from My Year At Home: A Love Letter to My Creativity, published in Issue #62 of Uppercase Magazine. The 12 lessons I reflected on are available in the full essay, available online and in newsstands everywhere.

WEDNESDAY

We’re in Michigan for the week, and it’s exactly what I was hoping it’d be. 

Blackbirds chase falcons in the clouds; the water chases the sky, F chases N across the sand and state lines. Every so often, N turns me to me and says, Mom, I’m so happy we’re here. 

We eat waffles on the beach, we climb rainbow stairs, we move through each mess more quickly and cleanly than before. We’re learning; we’re living; we’re all together—and not just in the physical sense of the word.  

THURSDAY

Michigan is on repeat all week, of course—as it should be—and it led me to discover the artwork of Brooklyn artist Laura Normandin, who is responsible for the album’s artwork, and who, quite frankly, I should have known about much sooner. I like her painted bottles, this woven enclosure, and the fact that it appears she’s managed to escape the internet. 

FRIDAY

Broad sun-stoned beaches.

White heat.
A green river.

A bridge,
scorched yellow palms

from the summer-sleeping house
drowsing through August.

Days I have held,
days I have lost,

days that outgrow, like daughters,
my harbouring arms.

—Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott 

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Only half alone.

N eating homemade granola: a glimpse from my forthcoming illustrated essay about food + family, for Issue 38 (EASE) of Chickpea Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

After spending a year with her at home, I drop F off for her first day of daycare. I told myself she’d be screaming and crying, but she leaps from my arms into her teacher’s without even a wayward glance. I disappear quietly, as we’re instructed to do. I shut the wooden fence behind me and walk home. 

There were many times over this past year when I wished for nothing more than to be alone. To feel the pulse and thought inside me, to see if there’s any brilliancy left. Any original thought. Today’s sky is my favorite sky: overcast, a rumbling heat-stricken white, a beautiful nothing. Open and waiting. I still don’t know this city, not really, but I know my neighborhood, and I feel lucky to have a 6-block radius that feels like home. Beyond familiarity, which comes with time, there’s a sense of belonging. Self-declared.

I watch wieldy dandelions sway from street traffic, their seeds blown off one by one and wished upon. N is learning about thunder and lightning, how it forms when frozen raindrops bump up against each other. I feel like that now—bumpy, knotted, pushed and pulled. Electric. The scent of space follows me. 

I once read that love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. For so long I’ve been convinced that I’d lost this half to many places: childhood, adulthood and its suffocating responsibilities, marriage and its many compromises, my young children and the intensity of care required. 

As I walk, it occurs to me that I’ve been thinking about it all wrong. Half of me isn’t lost, buried somewhere out there waiting to be found. It’s been slivered and sprinkled, each piece tucked away in the dearest of places—for when someone might need it most. A sliver of myself to care for my childhood self, a sliver to help my present self carry on, a sliver for my marriage and its growth, a sliver left with each of my girls. Many still have have disappeared or lost themselves, forever, in people and places that didn’t pass the test of time—but they exist somewhere still, as ghosts and memories, within pages and paintings for someone else to find. 

If I could take find and take them all back, these tiny splinters and slivers would make a half and that half would—could—make me whole once again. But aren’t I lucky to have half of myself carried around in so many others? Part of me is with F, covering her small shoulders should a slight breeze come along. That small part will stay with her all day, and the rest of me will follow when collection time comes. 

I walk the rest of the way home. The tiny fingers of her absence prod me along, catching me behind the knees, hugging me close. I am only half alone. 

TUESDAY

One of the tiny books I made for graduation school was about leaving N at daycare so I could work, attend class, and do homework. It’s been two years since I made this little book, but it’s been circling my mind repeatedly this week. 

My favorite thing about art + literature is that it’s a vehicle for transportation. Books can take you anywhere you want to go—and places you’d be afraid to go otherwise, including further into yourself. 

You can read the rest of this tiny book in my journal. 

WEDNESDAY

“So many of us are thinking about love specifically because we are thinking about sorrow. How to hold it. How to survive the deathgrip of capitalism’s man-made chaos. How to bear broadcasted genocide(s), white supremacism, police brutality, our government’s incessant, deliberate dehumanization. How to stay human in the face, the grinning lustfulness, of empire. Several times a day I think, witnessing ordinary people do extraordinarily loving things, isn’t it incredible? All of these people for whom sorrow is leading them to love?” —from Shira Erlichman’s Freer Form

THURSDAY

Why creative labour isn’t always seen as “real work” and how to write the unbearable story (via Nicole Donut). 

FRIDAY

When I left, I left my childhood in the drawer
and on the kitchen table. I left my toy horse
in its plastic bag. 
I left without looking at the clock. 
I forget whether it was noon or evening. 

Our horse spent the night alone, 
no water, no grains for dinner. 
It must have thought we’d left to cook a meal 
for late guests or to make a cake
for my sister’s tenth birthday. 

I walked with my sister, down our road with no end. 
We sang a birthday song. 
The warplanes echoed across the heavens. 
My tired parents walked behind, 
my father clutching to his chest
the keys to our house and to the stable. 

We arrived at a rescue station. 
News of the airstrikes roared on the radio. 
I hated death, but I hated life, too, 
when we had to walk to our drawn-out death, 
reciting our never-ending ode.

—Leaving Childhood Behind by Mosab Abu Toha

xx,
M

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Dear Somebody: Tiny miracles everywhere

Girl and sitar, in the latest issue of Uppercase Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

The past week has been full of it’s one of those days days—the kind where the baby cries until she’s sunset purple, my lower back begins to crumble, the toddler vomits at two in the morning, and all of my friends feel worlds away. I wake up at eleven o’clock, two o’clock, and five o’clock, finally getting up at six. When I look in the mirror, I feel detached or disappointed or maybe nothing at all. 

It’s been storming for two days. Like the people in my home, the entire outdoors has been cranky or crying. Rain stamps out any lingering spark from the weekend’s fireworks and when we finally step outside, after wrestling with diapers and socks and rain boots and zippers, a fine mist cleans my face. It’s cold enough to need a sweater, which delights me more than most things can, and I’m irritable enough that my own delight surprises me.

We walk. The toddler sings to herself and the baby sleeps. In this moment, no one is crying or calling my name. I know this will change as soon as I allow myself to feel relieved, but I try to be in the moment anyway. I only sort-of succeed. I wish I had some time for myself, I think.

T notices, because he reminds me that gratitude cultivates joy. He’s already listened to me complain a fair amount, so I don’t push the lesson away. Instead, I make a list. 

There is much I am grateful for: children who are beautifully healthy and strange; a marriage that has learned to rise rather than crumble; a body that shows up though the neck always grumbles, the bones feel emptied, and the entire thing is tired of being tired. 

There is much I am grateful for: the turned leaves, freshly watered from days of rain; a pleasing lawn, freshly mown; the sprinkled song of flowers. Four birds on a wire, whistling.

Clouds that cover the ruddy clay sun in July, that’s what I’m grateful for. A thunderstorm that claps the house, the stony sound of summer hail. A late morning walk. A baby taking her third bath—only the third one she’s ever taken in her entire life—and seriously feeling the warm water run down her face. A baby who listens to the running faucet and hears a waterfall or sea lions playing or her sister splashing. The awe in her eyes. The small wonder of children. The wonder of small children. A young family stumbling to find their way. A young family stumbling, finding their way. The coolest, most welcome breeze. Tiny miracles everywhere. 

TUESDAY

I’m currently reading This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, on recommendation by a friend, and enjoying it very, very much. I’m not finished yet, but I keep thinking about the following conversation, which is similar to the one T and I have quite often, and the one I have with myself on a daily basis:

“Such a tough life. This is not the easy way."

"No," Penn agreed, "but I'm not sure easy is what I want for the kids anyway."

She looked up at him. "Why the hell not?"

"I mean, if we could have everything, sure. If we can have it all, yeah. I wish them easy, successful, fun-filled lives, crowned with good friends, attentive lovers, heaps of money, intellectual stimulation, and good views out the window. I wish them eternal beauty, international travel, and smart things to watch on tv. But if I can't have everything, if I only get a few, I'm not sure easy makes my wish list."

"Really?"

"Easy is nice. But its not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in," said Penn. "Easy is nice. But I wonder how often it leads to fulfilling work or partnership or being."

"Easy probably rules out having children," Rosie admitted.

"Having children, helping people, making art, inventing anything, leading the way, tackling the world's problems, overcoming your own. I don't know. Not much of what I value in our lives is easy. But there's not much of it I'd trade for easy either, I don't think.” 

P.S. Do you have any book recommendations? Please post them in the comments for us all to enjoy. 

WEDNESDAY

The latest edition of my column Being was published in Issue #58 of Uppercase Magazine. I wrote about creative breakthroughs and how to cultivate them. 

“A mistake I continually made throughout my career was expecting myself to produce work without rest or creative input. It’s impossible to evolve your work, or your voice, without allowing yourself to be inspired or moved by the environment that surrounds you. Although the foundation of my work is rooted in emotional well-being and healing, I found myself prioritizing work over friendship, production over creative intake, and relying on old skills over experimentation. As a result, my work remained stale, almost forgettable. Each painting was missing a spark, the essence that would imbue it with meaning. To light the spark, I had to first give myself room to breathe.”

—Creative Breakthroughs from Issue #58 of Uppercase Magazine, available now. 

THURSDAY

We should be ambitious about our friendships. 

FRIDAY

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

—Eagle Poem by Joy Harjo

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: For the love of sisters

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY 

I was able to speak with the wonderful Margo Tantau on her podcast Windowsill Chatsabout building a life of creativity and purpose. We also discuss living according to your values, being dedicated to your vision, and what I believe most holds us creatives back from success. You can listen to Episode 146 here. 

TUESDAY

My sister and her family visit for a couple days, a trip that comes and goes so quickly that it feels like a blur even while it’s happening. In tow are my two beautiful nephews and my niece, Z, who was born only a handful of weeks before N. The two girls are as different in personality and behavior as they are close in age: where N is cautious and meditative, Z is adventurous and impulsive. Together, though, there is some semblance of balance. 

Different doesn’t always attract. It was more than two decades before my sister and I discovered our own rhythm, mashed somewhere between college graduations, first apartments, and marriages. Each time I reached a life milestone she’d already passed through it brought us closer together. For awhile, we’d swim in the same waters, and then she’d go on ahead again. 

Our personalities follow traditional birth order to a certain degree. As the older child, my sister tends to be a bit of a perfectionist while I enjoy making a good mess with my hands. She’s conscientious and thoughtful, quick to say the right thing and mean it; I have learned how to be less judgmental, more vulnerable. I am confrontational, she likes keeping the peace. We’re both cripplingly self-aware. 

We take the kids to the City Museum, the emerald city of St. Louis. Z bounces off the industrial bridges and steel-roped ladders, climbing as quick as her agile little body allows. N clings to her dad hard. She doesn’t want to climb, she doesn’t want to run, she doesn’t want to try—or she does, but not now. I encourage her, and then fight the urge to continue. How often have I wanted the very same thing my parents have wanted for me, simply in my own time? 

Z and her brothers are out of sight, lost somewhere in the noise of Sabreliner 40 aircrafts and frighteningly oversized slides. Slowly, N begins to open. She walks across a four-foot-wide Slinkie and peers through each square window. She watches. She avoids the vertical tunnels, opting instead for the narrow stairs, and climbs to the top of a castle turret. I ask her what she’s thinking, as I often do, but she doesn’t answer. She watches. Eventually, she lets her dad’s hand go and climbs a half-dome gym on her own. Slowly, I see her unfurl. She’s a lily, blooming—not hesitantly, but with deliberation, the way someone who knows herself well does. 

After awhile, we all meet up and herd the kids inside for lunch. There, surrounded by half-eaten pretzels and hot dogs, ice cream cups and toddler water bottles, N and Z begin to run. They run back and forth across the 1870’s Vault Room, chasing each other with open arms. Z speeds across and N helps her up when she falls. N laughs hysterically, falling on purpose, and Z puts out her hand for the assist. They smile and hug, their faces full of childhood and joy. This is special, I think to myself, as I look at their eyes which are looking into each others’. 

I’ve spent my entire life counting the ways my sister and I are different, as if it matters, as if we’d allow the very things that make us who we are keep us apart. I know, with certainty, that this is driven by the fear that we one day will. 

I note this now, as I watch N and Z fall to the ground still hugging, still laughing, their arms braided together. At my age, it is obvious: the way sisters can fall apart if they’re not too careful, how all friendships—even those bound by blood—need nurturing, like young lilies waiting for bloom. 

To N and Z, it is far less complicated. As it should be. The afternoon sunlight streams through the second-story window. One child’s tiny hand prepares to reach out in anticipation, in knowing—before the other child falls. Slowly, my heart grounds itself. 

WEDNESDAY

On learning how to see in our creative work:

“I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world. They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes. To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things. This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them. At the beginning, they typically "see" things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all. Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become "old men with snow on their shoulders," or the lake looks like a "giant eye." The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness. And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck. But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in. Their journals fill up with lovely things like, "the mirror with nothing reflected in it." This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing. To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing. The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human.” 

—The Art of Finding by Linda Gregg

THURSDAY

“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

—George Bernard Shaw

FRIDAY

Old friend now there is no one alive
who remembers when you were young
it was high summer when I first saw you
in the blaze of day most of my life ago
with the dry grass whispering in your shade
and already you had lived through wars
and echoes of wars around your silence
through days of parting and seasons of absence
with the house emptying as the years went their way
until it was home to bats and swallows
and still when spring climbed toward summer
you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers
of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened
you and the seasons spoke the same language
and all these years I have looked through your limbs
to the river below and the roofs and the night
and you were the way I saw the world

—Elegy for a Walnut Tree by W. S. Merwin

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: Time is strange

A glimpse of Maja, the painting I’ve spent my mornings working on.

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

Time is strange. It is both urgent and painstakingly slow. 

Today, it strikes me that I have less than 3 months to finish my thesis picture book, my dissertation, and my final exhibition. Less than 3 months to prepare a nursery. Less than 3 months until my next book is released. At the same time, I have almost 3 more months of medication, of uncomfortable sleep, of monitoring my blood sugar, of remembering to take half a dozen pills. 3 more months of sharing my body with another person. 

Time is strange. It is what I govern my days by, despite knowing that it is entirely made up. It is both urgent and painstakingly slow. 

I read Otis Kidwell Burger’s diary entry and something about her experience, so familiar and unlike mine at the same time, eases the restless in me:

But surely everyone, at one time or another, has awakened thinking himself in some other place or in some earlier time. The conception of time depends, then, I suppose, upon the perception of continuity, and for this reason a woman's sense of time must be quite different from a man's. Her sense of continuity is internal and natural, not the external and easily interrupted continuity of clocks and calendars. She connects directly to the source of time, and the moon that pulls the tides around the world also pulls the hormone tide within her; her months are marked off without need of calendar. She carries her months, her years, her spring and winter within herself.

TUESDAY

I’m very excited by Violeta Lopez’s work, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting her latest picture book, At the Drop of a Cat (Enchanted Lion Books) ever since I first caught glimpses of it last year. I’m someone who becomes easily trapped in thinking rather than doing: I mull over my process. I think through ideas and experiments without actually just…trying them. This is rooted in fear of failure—I’m aware of that, yes, but having the awareness hasn’t made it any easier to change. 

Watching Violeta’s process of creating this book is eye-opening. Instantly, it becomes clear that there are particular perspectives that are attainable only through our hands, that can only be conjured by the grit of paper and pencil on our fingers, inaccessible entirely to our minds. 

In my own thesis project, I’ve finally finished re-writing the manuscript to my picture book. It took me over a dozen rewrites, 3 entirely different storylines, and many months to finally hear my own voice throughout the book. As I begin to paginate and create thumbnail artwork for the book, I find myself leaning forward, excited and nervously, by Violeta’s method for putting together a story. Rather than our own thoughts or ideas or even the stirring of our own hearts, it is the doing that continues to surprise us the most. 

WEDNESDAY

“I also have a full life outside. I work from home, but I travel a lot. Those two things mean I have to be very routine based, which sometimes means knowing when to stop writing. Every day, if I’m not done working by like five or six, I give myself a hard stop and I step away from my computer and usually don’t return to it. I call it quits for the day and any emails can wait until the next day. For me, knowing when to stop writing was a problem a couple years ago. I would work late into the night. I was telling myself I did my best writing at half ‘til midnight and then work deep until like 2am, and that wasn’t really serving anything. I’m much more excited about the idea of waking up and getting to writing now. The fact that I can wake up and know that I can put words on a blank page is more exciting to me than feeling like I have to put words on a blank page in order to earn the right to sleep.”

—Hanif Abdurraqib on avoiding burnout in creative work

THURSDAY

“…While we wait we must remain prepared and alert, and one way to do so is to write things down, in order to advance the idea, as this indicates a readiness to receive. Beware, however, of the idea that comes too easily, as this is often a residual idea and only compelling because it reminds us of something we have already done. We don’t want an idea that is like something we have done before. We don’t want a second-hand idea. We want the new idea. We want the beautiful idea.

One day, you will write a line that feels wrong, but at the same time provides you with a jolt of dissonance, a quickening of the nervous system. You will shake your head and write on, only to find that you come back to it, shake your head again, and carry on writing — yet back you come, again and again. This is the idea to pay attention to, the difficult idea, the disturbing idea, shimmering softly among all the deficient, dead ideas, gently but persistently tugging at your sleeve.”

—Nick Cave on how to recognize when something you’ve written is worthwhile

FRIDAY

I never knew I loved the sun
even when setting cherry-red as now
in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
                             except the Sea of Azov
or how much

I didn't know I loved clouds
whether I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn't know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
   heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
   and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved
   rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
   by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
   to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
   watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

—from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved by Nâzim Hikmet

(This poem was sent to me by Stephanie, a subscriber. My favorite gift to receive is a poem. If you’d like to share your favorites, please do so in the comments below for us all to enjoy.)

If you'd like to support me, you can pre-order my upcoming book of illustrated essays, How it Feels to Find Yourself, for yourself, a loved one, or both! My art prints, stationery, and books are available through BuyOlympia.

xx,

M

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Dear Somebody: How I give my thanks.

From Notes on Inspiration for Issue 55 of Uppercase Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I step out into the evening and breathe it all in: the borrowed sky, the pinprick of star, your small hand lost in your father’s. I’m six paces behind. I follow your shadows like a stranger, I memorize each crack before you step on it, I see the uneven anger of sidewalk lashing against your toes. You talk in night voices, small but bright against the still air. I step onto the ending of each sentence—an eavesdropper, a passing thought, a pair of wings in the sky. A few maple leaves still hold onto the emptying branches above us, stout. Resolute.

For now, we are three. For tonight, there is only us. I give my thanks to whoever still listens, I gulp each stony breath more deeply than the last, I collect the cold like marbles in my lungs. I count how many evenings like this we still have left.

TUESDAY

"Inspiration propels us to act. Within the world of creativity, it is something that inspires us to create, experiment, or expand the way we think. While plagiarism merely replicates another person’s work, inspiration motivates us to thoughtfully collect elements of an artwork we resonate with, to create something new—something that previously did not exist. At its most genuine, inspiration guides us towards innovation and natural evolution.

When I’m drawn towards a particular piece of art, I study it and try to understand what it is I’m captured by. I consider three specific areas and mark my observations in my journal or sketchbook. What I’m looking for is a through-line—the line tying my sources of inspiration to the art that I’d like to create. Pinpointing this is essential in making work that is original and honest—that carries the spirit of you, despite who or what it’s inspired by." 

––An excerpt from my latest column, Being, for Issue #55 of Uppercase Magazine 

WEDNESDAY

“We seldom think of conversation as commitment. but it is. I find that expressing what I really feel and telling another person what is actually important to me at the moment is difficult. It requires a commitment on my part to do so, and I sense that this is true for most of us. It is equally difficult to listen. We are usually so full of our own thoughts and responses that we seldom really listen close enough to one another to grasp the real flavor of what the other person is attempting to convey. Creative communication in depth is what allows us to experience a sense of belonging to others. It is the force that limits the destructive potential in our lives and what promotes the growth aspects. Life is a struggle. Coping with a lifetime of change is a struggle, but through a lifetime of change we will experience ourselves as full persons only to the degree that we allow ourselves that commitment to others which keeps us in creative dialogue.” 

––bell hooks on conversation as commitment.  

THURSDAY

Last night, we watched The Snowman, an animated short based on the original children's book by Raymond Briggs. It was perfect in the way most movies from childhood aren't––that is, it stood up to the high bar of wonder and magic my 7-year-old self encased it in. Better yet, as an adult (and artist), I'm now able to fully appreciate the hundreds of hours that go into drawing and animating such a fantastic film.

Today, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat. My favorite track is, of course, Walking in the Air: gorgeously haunting piano music paired with Peter Auty's beautiful voice. 

P. S. I'm also reading Grace Loh Prasad's The Orca and the Spider: On Motherhood, Loss, and Community. Have you read it? I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have.

FRIDAY

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

––Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

xo,

M

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