A future self as glimpsed in a poem by Grace Paley:

“Here I am in the garden laughing an old woman with heavy breasts and a nicely mapped face how did this happen well that’s who I wanted to be at last a woman in the old style sitting stout thighs apart under a big skirt grandchild sliding on off my lap a pleasant summer perspiration [...]

{I am still here}

…Finishing this book. Breathing. Getting paint everywhere. Discovering + remembering what it means to be an artist like this: Courage. Revisions. Messes. Risk. It is time consuming. All consuming. It is terrifying. It is transformative. It is glorious. It is exhausting. (Hoping to be finished Monday.) What I really need now is good music to [...]

What is real right now

I’m so quiet here, because everything is brimming now. The book, almost done. The illustrations too, are getting close. But also, a dozen other things, everything converging into this brief month: other deadlines, contests, and the new routine of school. It would be a lie to say that things feel easy. Things, in fact, feel [...]

Closer every day

Just a quick note to share some studio snapshots I took today… and to to say thank you for all your encouragement. It means the world to me.

I am in labor

It feels like I am in labor, to be this close with the manuscript. So close. But still, not there. Not where it needs to be. The final chapters dogging me, not quite right, not quite what they need to be yet. It’s like some part of my mind is sabotaging me into this stasis: [...]