How many ways did you use your sketchbook this month?

I filled mine with poetry and processing and figures and scribbles and dreams.

An end-of-month review of my pages always tells an interesting story…

The first warm-enough weekend found us out on a sunny brewery patio sketching and chatting—

Spring has a striving, forward motion and I find myself trying to shake off the sense that everything good in life is far, far away…winter can be like that…

This winter was particularly hard, y’all. I used the sketchbook to map my mental health across the season and identified that I’ve been in my Mariana Trench Era aka “THE VAST PIT OF DESPAIR!!!!” [Shoutout to all my perimenopausal pals! *high fives while sobbing/snacking*]

Dreams…

I shared this powerful dream I had about my dad’s death with you the other week—

Something I found interesting was that I’ve had a few dreams about flowers growing in forgotten places, so I made a daily pantoum about that…

i have dreams about flowers
in derelict spaces
blooming amongst the forgotten
straining toward the light

in derelict spaces
their vibrant faces
straining toward the light
i think about the seeds i'm planting

their vibrant faces
"you've always been mine"
i think about the seeds i'm planting
the friends by my side

"you've always been mine"
blooming amongst the forgotten
the friends by my side
i have dreams about flowers...

[march 11, 2024--  A conversation with my friend Joe about a powerful vision he had seeded the line "you've always been mine". Thank you for sharing, Joe.]

This dream was a trip: A mannequin of an old woman is way out in the desert and these lookalike ladies are on a pilgrimage to come dance with it… I wrote a poem here, too:

three women dancing & laughing in the desert
silver hair shining in high noon sun
they've come this far to meet themselves
to animate the effigy

silver hair shining in the the high noon sun
it takes a willingness
to animate the effigy
to see yourself as an oasis

it takes a willingness
in a blue dress
to see yourself as an oasis
mirroring the mirage

in a blue dress
they've come this far to meet themselves
mirroring the mirage
three women dancing & laughing in the desert

[march 3rd, 2024]

From the Art of Dying Creative Death Cafe, March 20th:

What my pages looked like after the first hour of process & shares. I always take a lot of notes while folks share their work, then I see if there’s a way the quotes weave together.

Here’s the weave I made from participants’ own beautiful words:

I sing of beauty & fruition
Of loosening, renewal, separation.

An offering to the unknown
Thank you, mama, 
Home, sweet home.

How do you describe the sun to a seed?
A new perspective, an offering

[It’s not done living!
Look what you’ve done!]

I speak directly to the sun.

[Words, phrases, ideas gathered from participants in the Art of Dying Creative Death Cafe, March 20th, 2024]

This was from the second hour of Death Cafe— a 20 minute free-write responding to the question: What seeds are you planting (or want to plant) to bloom after you die?

may i one day be forgotten
and dirt become my name.
call me Soil & call me Hopeful:
let me muddy the truth for a while.

i plant this big bossomed laugh, my truth
i let these pages grow as blossom
i vow my tears come back as rain
let me flood the hope-parched plain

let me be imagined, holding
& when no body for imagination remains 
to carry on all thoughts of me
then let me finally turn in & in
let me then float out & out

my legacy, a vote
of confidence
in the glorious rightness
of everyone's thirsty day in the sun.

[march 20th, 2024]

Also…this sock puppet?:

How about you? Did you use your sketchbook/notebook/journal/diary to get some interesting work done in the last month? What kind of story does it tell?

xo,