Cyril Connolly said, “The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.”

I don’t think the artist one day falls through a hole; I think she is born inside of one. The climb out shows up as creativity to those around her. So she gets the title of Artist, but titles hold zero gravity inside of her inevitable and sometimes desperate pursuit to illuminate the cavernous abyss of her heart’s living room.

But climbing and climbing until finally busting through that river’s surface offers up a potent daily candy made of a sugar for which there are absolutely no substitutes. We get to be mountain climbers while sitting on park benches… Overcoming is great exercise. The eyes it produces can travel the stars by way of some smashed sidewalk glass.

We are all these artists – designing our creative climbs out of what hurts – to where we heard there is some plateau with a picnic spread.

So may you laugh hard inside of an extended reward born of making it above whatever currents have kept you water-bound. May your witnessing of the upcoming overhead twinkling explosions of emerald and white summer snow rewire your attention from the darker rivers to the mystery of the camaraderie inherent in our human order.

I raise a toast to you for busting through, and for being my friend inside the river, too… MORE