return
"You may want your work to be perfect...I just want mine to be finished."
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
"A man who fears ridicule will never go far, for good or ill: he remains on this side of his talents, and even if he has genius, he is doomed to mediocrity."
E.M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born
I’m rarely content with anything I’ve done. With anything I've written. With anything I've made. I'm simply satisfied that I've finished it. That I've seen it through. That it's done. That it's completed.
I’m not precious about it. I'm not high minded. I just make things.
I make something and I share it. No matter how it turned out. No matter how I feel about it. No matter what it is.
They aren’t my babies. They’re not my children. Just some things I found. Just some things I was given. They were never meant to stay.
There are Tibetan Buddhist monks that make sand mandalas. They labor for weeks, working for hours on end, assembling intricate designs and patterns made only of colored grains of sand. And when they finally finish, after all the tedium and toil, they sweep it up and return it all to the river. They give it back to where it came from. They come back to the beginning.
I’m never apprehensive about putting what I make out into the world. That’s where I got it from to begin with. The work was never mine, anyway. None of it ever really belonged to me.
I let them go, and they release me. It's the way I clear my head, my heart, and my desk. It's the way I get back to the business of starting again. The way I get back to the drawing board. The way I make room for the next thing.
P.S. - ICAD Day 38-40
P.P.S. - A couple weeks ago I shared a piece I submitted to an Open Call for a Collage exhibition is in Prague. I was excited to hear that my submission arrived safely and in tact. But, I was even more excited to see that the Czech Collage Collective was kind enough to share my piece on their Instagram Page. Special thanks to my friend Stephen Tomasko (on IG here) for telling me about the Open Call, and to Jitka Kopejtkova (IG here) who so gracious and caring in letting me know that my art had been received.
And by clearing your head and heart by letting go, you’re filling ours, your readers, with your works of art. We absorb them and in return, we give our joy to others. Like a stream, flowing endlessly.
Great read and interesting pieces, thanks