Five Happy Kids in a Small Car
on creativity and control
This weekend I got to be one out of five happy kids in a small car, as described by our new friend Jonny who filled up our tank with a big smile. We were driving west, which takes a little over an hour, until the highway stops on a jaw of rocks. In truth, the Ocean terrifies me. I’ve heard it’s better than the Atlantic Ocean because over there they have horseshoe crabs, and I’m told that they are as old as dinosaurs and they bop right up next to you while you’re swimming—touching your toes and your elbow and maybe your mouth if you’re underwater and unlucky. And not on purpose, but because there’s so many of them—they sprawl out like ocean cookies on a pan. I prefer the mountains. Give me snow covered sunny patch groves of moss and spruce. I like danger in the quiet.
This weekend I could look down from the house and see the end of this continent. If you were to put your finger on the edge of the map, the thick line between land and the ocean, that’s what I saw. And if you look out, at a certain hour of the day, you can squint your eyes and imagine that the dark, low clouds are tsunamis on the horizon. Whenever I am here it seems impossible to me that anything else can exist: my friends, my family, the railroad tracks in my hometown. They all vanish.
The five of us represent Minnesota, Michigan, Mississippi, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin which are all M states, even Wisconsin if you looked at it from a different angle. This seemed to please Jonny, with his big smile and us with ours. He washed our windows and we gave him a CD and off we went back home, tumbling down the coast and then back up to the green valley. Moss town.
I’ve started to write a book about Moss Town, which is strange because I have many, many things to write about and I’m completely surprised at myself that this is the first book project and it is apparently about a mossy town. So far. Although, in some ways it’s completely unsurprising because I feel happy and I want to write about something happy. And this town is adventurous, sleepy, misty, dangerous. All the perfect adjectives for a good beginning.
I really like to control things. For example, I recently purchased two sketchbooks and labeled one of them Book #1 but then I realized, later that day, that the other sketchbook was for Book #1. So I tore out the pages I had worked on and switched them up. But now Book #1 is seeping into both notebooks. I’ve never started a book, so to all of you who have done this, is that what this is all about? Are all my ideas and sentences and images going to show up in everything I do?
I think I’m okay with that. But it is scary, too—it’s big, as big as I make it yet it has to become that big on its own, and I don’t know what else is real or my imagination and it’s hard to remember what time it is. So far, writing a book has been like swimming across an ocean. And I’m excited to do it, I’ve been waiting for this day, but it’s daunting and I don’t always know what direction to swim.
This book has been making its way out of me in different forms. Some have been little comics and that absolutely terrifies me. I want to control my ideas and put them in the places where I want them. I want to know how best to format my ideas. Which, is a big thing when it comes to the creative process, but it’s just the beginning and I have to let it be for now. I am learning that having a relationship with art means letting it grow—even if it becomes bigger than me. I can’t protect anything because nothing is mine. I can only do my best to show up.
Love,
Jo
