The Artist's Oracular Cook Book

CARD #1 - FAITH

In 2005 at the I Park Artist's Enclave in Connecticut it was the custom for residents to leave behind something for the scrapbook, as well as a creative recipe for a cocktail. Because I spent two months utterly blissed out in a creative fury there, my contribution was the "Artist's Oracular Cook Book", cards with commentary on the back. I always meant to get around to publishing them, but like the other books that are in my files, I never did.

(Someone asked me to share some of them again........what the heck. Here they are, one card at a time. And while I'm at it, I'll let them be the meditation that once were again........)

It seems to me that a creative act, like a creative life, really does, after you take a good look around, have to begin with a leap of faith. Faith in yourself, faith in some greater web of minds and being and continuum you are a part of, faith in the sheer beauty and delight of the process, faith in what you'll learn from it when you're (theoretically) "done".

Here's something my friend Felicia providentially sent to me recently, about creativity, and the Muse.

As you come near the glass, she approaches from the other side to meet you. You lift your pen, and she raises hers to touch its tip in the other world. You begin to move your hand and words form on the glass on her side, the other side. Patiently, you now follow her pen; you hear what she is writing, but dimly. You can see a little bit into the images she is creating. Can you read what she is writing?

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(This is the only image not my own - it was created by my friend Catherine Nash, who let me use it because after 20 years it's still so firmly embedded in my mind.)