Begin Again, and Again
I've often marveled at the strange, cyclical nature of life and creativity. How the things that I sketched five years ago, with no real thought, have elements that are now a part of my current art practice in ways I never planned for.
I learned how to crochet when I was 11ish. It was never something I did seriously (or well), and if you asked me a few months ago if I'd ever pick it up again I would've confidently told you: Nope! But here I am, with several works-in-progress, a basketful of yarn in my studio, and an itch to get back to some of those projects as soon as possible. Something about working with thread in embroidery lead me to working with peg looms, which lead me back to crochet, and now I feel like the hobby will probably stick with me for the rest of my life. And yeah, that surprises me.
But not as much as the way that my creative whims have circled around yet again, and fallen into the well-worn path of my first love…writing. You know how as a kid, barely self-aware and really just floundering through adolescence with all the wit of a snail (no offense, snails), parents and teachers will ask you what you want to be when you grow up? My automatic answer up until college was that I wanted to be a writer. Strange, because I never actually dreamed of being a writer. Not in a romanticized sense, and nor with any idea of what that could possibly look like for me. All I knew was that I liked to write, and I wasn't bad at it, and no adult in my life ever scoffed when I offered that possibility to their consideration.
So I wrote a lot of stories and poetry all throughout highschool, and then a bit in college, and then I stopped. It took me a while to get used to the realities of supporting myself as an adult before I was able to come back to writing. Also, I had a brief love affair with the Banjo and a very intense fling with World of Warcraft. But when I DID come back to writing in 2015ish, I wrote a novel. And then a novella. And then I stopped again to get used to the realities of supporting another human being as a parent.
Until now. I caught the bug again when my partner suggested I try a fiction podcast contest. While I didn't win, I did have a tremendous amount of fun. But as much as I loved disappearing into an invented world again, I kept looking over my shoulder at the paints in my studio. Art was important, too. I wasn't about to leave that behind, even though I was craving much more involvement with the written word.
I didn't think it would be possible to combine the two, not in a way that I really wanted, but a coach that I was seeing planted that all-powerful and mystical "What if" seed in my brain. And now I'm writing up a storm, and experimenting. I don't have any art that connect to the writing ready to share yet, but I do have an excerpt of my newest fiction project. You can check it out below. Before long, with some nurturing, I hope that this "what if" seed will start to bloom, and the next thing I'm ready to share will be some artwork to accompany the words.
From the bench on the northern shore of Arcadia’s only lake, where Hemlock sat with a book open in her lap, she could see two figures walking on the water. They were within shouting distance, rising and falling like buoys as a wind-swept churning moved the waters beneath their feet, their fingers twitching out to steady themselves. Hemlock didn’t shout, though. Nor did she read the collection of essays intended to slow her frantic thoughts and skip-hopping heartbeat. The waterwalkers were a better balm than either the well worn book or the cold breeze that came tumbling over the lake and into her face.
They shuffled methodically over the surface, like robins scrutinizing the ground beneath them for worms. Hemlock could see that the water sloshed over their sneakers every now and then. Their gazes were pointed ever downwards, the smaller one’s long hair obscuring their face, but the taller one had her hair pulled back and into a tangled bun that gave Hemlock chance enough to memorize her features.
She watched them until the shadows had fled from her bench, and a family with two loud dogs and two louder still children had made camp behind her on the modest green of the park. Hemlock left the waterwalkers to their business, as they stepped over larger waves when they had the mind to pay attention, and crouched down to lean on their knees and peer at the depths when the winds fell and the water turned briefly to silk.
Back home, with boxes clustered like massive cubic crystals in every corner of each room on the first floor, Hemlock abandoned the consequences of her recent move in favor of wading through the field of grasses and flowers behind her house. She cleared a small space to sit where she could disappear into the thicket just like a fawn left to wait for its mother. The softly grinding call of a grasshopper took her attention long enough for the little ones to drift into a circle around Hemlock without her seeing exactly where they had come from. But in the pause of the insect’s call, she saw the small wooden masks they wore peeking around the blades of grass, and the sound of their bodies floating was a distant jingling of bells.
“Hi again,” Hemlock whispered. She looked at each spirit in turn, hoping to see the one that spoke the first time she’d met the coterie.
You’reback.
The voice came to her as if spoken somewhere between here and there. The words tripped over themselves to reach her ears.
“Yes. I saw something new today.”