meaning

i could start by telling you all about the nutmeg in this blue mason jar.  the jar has been in my mother's kitchen for as long as i knew my mother.  the nutmeg, well i didn't know what nutmeg looked like until i saw it in this jar.  and due to the magic of nature it magically outlasted my mother.  now, like my mother, it's a memory, a physical memory, a story and a painting.

but this nutmeg and this mason jar, it's not enough.  it's impossible to come up with something meaningful to write every day.  yet somehow, i still try.  when i first started writing this blog, the writing felt like a necessary explanation, like the art needed a voice to make it more personal.  and i needed to explain myself.  in the beginning, i was an idea mill.  the paintings motivated the writing, the writing motivated the paintings, and the train drove itself.  sometimes i would catch the sentences forming in my head, like a meandering omniscient narrative, following me gently throughout my day, orating streams of consciousness that most definitely needed to be exorcised.  now, a hundred and fifty days into a crazy overdose of expression, i struggle to find the right words to say.  when i do finally find them, i'm not satisfied, and can only dwell on my own failure in their lack of potency. in those instances, is it not better to say nothing at all?

creativity is like that.  it is a river.  it ebbs and flows.  sometimes it storms, it floods, all it needs is a little push and it breaks its banks, needs out.  and then sometimes, creativity is but a trickle in a drought, barely a drink at all, just a faint memory of itself.  in art, as in life, i've learned it is important to become comfortable with harmony of opposites, the yin and the yang of everything.  life reflects nature.  and so on the days when i have nothing to offer, when i stare at the whiteness of the page and nothing but sad silence comes, it is okay i tell myself.  it's natural, and part of the process.  in the quietude, there always is something brewing, waiting to be unearthed.