Monday, January 9, 2012

Changing the Landscape

January 1st always seems like an arbitrary new year.  Flowers coming up in Spring feels like the start of a new year, as does September with each new school year beginning.  Maybe that's why Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) has always felt right to me.  Regardless, January 1st is how our calendar places the new year.  Not even timed with Winter Solstice, this "beginning" is in a dark time of year.  Here in the Midwest, it means short days, long nights; frozen ground, if not a lot of snow; cold weather.  Not exactly inspiring material for creating, for starting fresh.  And yet, if all my yoga can guide me here, I am not the same person today that I was yesterday.  I am not the same person that I was an hour ago.  Every action, every breath changes me ever so subtly.  I am new in each moment.  I can tap into this newness at any time and find a way to start fresh.

I've been reading articles, journaling, having conversations about how to grow Woolynns.  What direction to take.  Some of it is simply getting to know Minnesota better and figuring out where my work fits in.  But some of it is in the art itself.  Am I really making what I want to make?  Or am I recreating past successes hoping for another sale?  Can I sell what I want to make?  Can I make what sells?  These questions right here are my New Year's Eve, my Spring, my first day of school.  They are the seeds for whatever is about to grow.  And some of them won't grow right away, or even at all.   I intend to water them all, but I am sure I will forget some of them, unintentionally losing a possibility. It is important that I plant them even still.  Time to create a new landscape.


I had an acting teacher (eons ago) who told me to throw lots of balls in the air;  that way there is a better of chance of catching at least one.  Watch me throw about 12.  
Right now.