Saturday

"It is a mistake to intend to write only very important things in a journal. That is not its justification." ~ Andre Gide

In seeking a theme for today's blog entry, I came across the quote above in one of my journals from the early nineties. Nobel prize winning author, once significant and pretty much now forgotten, Gide wrote near eighty books and introduced the world to many significant writers in the first half of the twentieth century. As a journal writer who once nurtured the hope of being significant in literature, I read the journals of many writers from Fitzgerald and Gide to Thomas Mann and a number of lesser lights such as Julian Green. The experience was instructive.

The Gide quote above was useful for me in the following manner. If you only permit yourself to write thoughts of world class, earth shattering significance, you will in short order become paralyzed by the effort. Sure, it's good to have high standards, but if today's journal note or blog entry has to be the most significant thing you have every captured in lines, well... it makes you tired. It saps your joy.

As an artist I find this to be a liberating attitude. Instead of striving to make masterpieces every time pen touches paper, or brush smears paint on a canvas, I can take pleasure in the act of creation. I can even throw some of it in the trash.

All this to say, I don't have much that is really burning to be expressed here other than the desire to share some photos I have taken. And then, to work my way through my Saturday "to do" list.

Have a great one. And let the sunshine in.

PHOTO CAPTIONS

Top: Pottery studio ten miles south of Monterrey, 1981.

Middle: Two trains, Superior train yards, Fall 2008.

Bottom: Alphabet stencil over current Hispanic magazine. Stencils purchased in Athens, Ohio, 1974.