Patience has never been a strong suit. (So, too, the spelling--patients, patience. A not-very-helpful mneumonic once given: Nurses must have a lot of ______ when dealing with their ______...)

The past weeks have been a series of opportunities & lessons in pacing, in making-do, making it up, making mistakes, making it better and never again and for the first time altogether. Finishing out projects for my fantastic & patient Kickstarter backers, making up a method and subject and process for an altered catalog/book project, trying to keep waking up a little more fully each day—or most days, at least.

I am in love, I think, with newness & ingenuity when it comes to my own work(s) and learning and process. A conquistador of my own interiority, intellection, imagination. And, like a conquistador, sometimes perhaps more flash and hard edges than caretaker or sustainer. The process of making objects—be it postcards, broadsides, prints—in duplicate batches has been a maddening & necessary teacher in this. The hard fact of try, try again, fail more, fail better, finally make a viable prototype—and then do it all again nine or six or three more times has been sobering & disorienting.

Also,

the fact that physical objects don't behave like written objects.

With physical objects, when you get into the groove, figure out the materials and process and direction, you don't get to just keep on with it until you are done. There is drying time or a multi-step process that preceeds everything else or some other factor tied to the external partner that is the object that you must respect. Or ignore at your peril. This, perhaps, seems obvious. I needed to re-learn this.

I'll be closing out the year with friends, both old & new. Hopefully, with more room in my studio & heart & mind, there will be a few collaborations and on-going projects of my own that will get more oxygen and light in the weeks to come. A few books stacked up and waiting will pass between eyes & hands.

The Merriam-Webster free online dictionary insists one will find empyrean among the first ten (alphabetically, of course) rhymes for herculean. May we all find it, eventually.