Puppy. (well, dog actually). Dog moving. Dog so glad to be out of the car.

The 2 of us just got back from Brookline where there is bare ground. Even daffodils pointing up out of it, emerging. Movement. Movement you can see. Not like here – where it looks like a well-frosted cake still. The snow causes the earth to look, well, still.

When I first got back here, back to the lake, I was tired. Dis-oriented. Where was I in my life when I drove to the city? I recall this Native American saying that I will remember inexactly, but the idea holds true for me: when asked about one’s travels, just after arrival, the answer was, “I’m still waiting for my soul to catch up with me.” It’s like, I’ve arrived home, but I’m still arriving…

Driving is fast movement. Something I can feel. But in reading about plants, I’ve been surprised to discover how slow movement can be, that what I took for not moving was just imperceptible movement. And it occurred to me that so much of what passes as stillness is, in fact, moving.

When I consider the arc of creating a piece, I tend to want to be in the phase of putting a mark on paper, or dye on silk. The crucial birthing of the idea seems like non-movement. I’m not creating tangibly. But if I turn that idea upside down, the actual seed from which all else follows precedes the evidence. That changes the equation for me. I can value the conception of the idea, that murky time when it’s coming into being – the mind, the doodles, the trying one thing and another… searching for the DNA of the work.

And also, at the end of a piece. It’s done. It’s waiting, not yet in front of the outside viewer. All seems quiet. But, no, there is movement: the photographer, the labels, not to mention the shift going on inside myself. I now am taking my large piece into the world, and that internal movement, so imperceptible, is that not the one with most impact? For me, I’d say so. Yes.