Pink is not just a color

Morning walk. Listening to a poetry podcast. Wetted by the heavy mist against my face. Collecting small plant materials here and there for projects.

Again, I think of art. How it fits into the world. How does it stack up against what is going on. What people are feeling. What is to be done.

Sometimes art feels so measly in comparison. I think that way when I think of my own acts of creating, of my own pieces. But when I think of Art as a whole, it is so clearly to me an element that uplifts us all from the pain and drudge. No faith is required: one just thinks and feels in the face of it, and it spirits us away into a dimension that is limitless because of one’s own imagination.

I keep trying to achieve that. It feels like the robin I saw this morning, hopping up from the chain link fence to pluck a small berry just inches above its head, landing again on the fence, and repeating the process over and over. It’s just what we do.

BTW, the title of this post came from a line of one of the wonderful poems in the podcast, which was honoring the late Craig Arnold. The poem was "The Invisible Birds of Central America" and this phrase caught my ear: “the bird who pinks on a jeweller’s hammer.”