tabi ni yamite yume wa kare-no wo kakeme guru

- Basho
("Sick on a journey,
as for dream,
it wanders the withered fields")

Supposedly that is the last haiku that Basho ever wrote -- he dictated it to his assistant and then fell asleep and died. Or maybe I'm confusing him with Buson. When I am tired, all poets sort of seem to run together.

I highly recommend the book Art and Fear. I'm not a crazy nutcase when it comes to making things. The pull between needing to make and fear of making? Totally normal. The fear which manifests itself as fatalism about the outcome of the work or the quality of the work? Also totally normal.

I guess part of my problem this year (besides the creative process in general, which is, let's admit it, problematic) is that I'm approaching that place where no one can tell me if I'm doing a good job. That is, no one can tell me if I'm where I ought to be, because there's now something innerly rather than something outward which determines where I ought to be. Nobody else is going to know that. And really striking out on my own into that territory is quite frightening. Really. Nobody's made my art before, so nobody else but me can tell me if I'm making it or not.

Anyway. I'm feeling better, not about my abilities as an artist, but about my abilities to get things done in general, which is pretty good.

Did I tell you Jeff, from Orvieto, is coming to visit this weekend? Yep! He'll be arriving tomorrow night, and will be around until Sunday. Then I plunge into the week of doom, with 4 midterms and various and sundry other work, plus a wedding. But I'm really trying hard not to think too far beyond the end of this week.

'K. Night. Don't let the existentialist philosophies bite.
(Yep, we're studying existentialism and Nietsche in world views right now -- no wonder the world looks grim!)