Morning in the Studio (2015)

The Hound and I are in the studio again. Not for a full day, as I'm not up to that yet, but at least for a little while, during the quiet hours of a cool, grey Devon morning...which feels like a big step forward after weeks confined to bed.

Tilly has claimed her usual spot on the sofa, with a look that says: I'm not budging from here. She's been coming to work with me all her young life, and she finds it unsettling when the routine changes, as it has these last few weeks. As I write, she lies snuggled close beside me, her furry black head heavy in my lap, listening to the familiar tapping of computer keys and sighing with contentment.

Today, after weeks of set-backs and disruptions, I find solace in re-visiting
this passage from May Sarton's Journal
of Solitude: 

"I have said elsewhere that we have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can -- if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough -- be turned into account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. We go up to Heaven and down to Hell a dozen times a day -- at least I do. And the discipline of work provides an exercise bar, so that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative."

That is the beauty of art, I think. Not only that the discipline and joy of creation can lift us during hard times, but also that those hard times, too, can feed the work...and spin straw into gold.

Illustration above: Rapunzel by Paul O. Zelinzky