It’s not easy to sit down every morning with next-to-nothing and try to make something appear. But we do it because doing it beats not doing it.
The seed and the soil
Jeanne Marie Laskas once asked her friend Fred Rogers if the show was his church.
He thought a moment. He said it was easier to say what it wasn’t. It was not a show. He used the word “program,” never “show.”
“An atmosphere,” he said. What he was trying to create with “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was “an atmosphere that allows people to be comfortable enough to be who they are.” He continued: “I really don’t want to superimpose anything on anybody. If people are comfortable in that atmosphere, they can grow from there, in their own way.
“A lot of this — all of this — is just tending soil.”
Jesus told a parable about about a farmer who went out to sow seeds.
Some of the seeds fell along his path and got gobbled up by birds. Some of the seeds fell into rocks and sprouted almost immediately, but since they had no soil to take root, they scorched when the sun came out. Some of the seeds fell in deep, fertile soil, and those seeds took root and yielded much fruit.
I think Jesus may have left out at least one potential scenario: Later, the birds shit out the seeds, and by chance, some of them land in good soil elsewhere.
Sometimes I feel like, to quote Dylan, I’m just like that bird!
See also: Beautiful things grow out of shit
Ask they will tell you
Happy Sunday. Here is a trash collage, made with discards in my wastebasket. (An exercise from The Steal Like An Artist Journal.)
Good morning, diary
Here are entries from my diary this week, each one started with a brush pen drawing.
Some of them are drawn from life, some from my camera roll.
This one started by copying a drawing of Charlie Brown and letting my hand go.
I really love drawing chickens. (The cigarette is a nod to Lynda.)
Here’s a trash collage that I drew over. (The text is from an essay on Quaker pronouns.)
This one started with a swiped drawing from my 4-year-old.
More “Good morning, diary” on Twitter…
The brush pen
To warm up for the past couple mornings I’ve pulled out my trusty ol’ Pentel Pocket Brush Pen and filled a page in my diary before writing. (Hard not to be influenced when reading Lynda Barry!) The pen is probably half a decade old, and still works like new. Something magical about drawing with this thing…
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