enchantments

dis-enchantments

I haven't posted for a while.

In all transparency, I've been negotiating with the spirits of disenchantment. They can be persuasive and they recently presented their arguments in the form of challenges in my small circle of friends and family – health issues, spinal cord injuries, cancers, hospitals, rehab, stress, anxiety and burnout. Yet other arguments are regularly presented through the world's state of affairs – madness, folly, dystopia, inequity, insane political leadership, and an incomprehensible and chaotic race to an unfathomable, unthinkable bottom. A pervasive sense of helplessness accompanied all these fine arguments.

I got unseated.

It's curious how the balance tips from feeling somewhat resourced – cautiously optimistic? to feeling under-resourced – underwater and reaching for the surface? mired and stuck in the mud? Curious too, how the desire for what would be resourcing also gets sidelined just when it's most valuable. It's a wobbly balance indeed and it is the way of spirals. I've always been a little envious, and admiring, of those with the tenacity of commitment – once again, the way lies in the practice.

If I'm not quite dancing yet – I'm picking away at it :-)

re-enchantments

However, I have not been completely idle or stagnant during this hiatus. While rummaging around with my distractions and disenchantments, I found a bit of buoyancy in my immersion with a book illustration project and lost myself in some welcome, high-quality, scratching time in creating a series of illustrations for Dr. Robert Zeitlin's pithy little book. It's on Amazon: How to be a Better Partner, A Brief Illustrated Guide for Dads

You can check out the illustrations here:

I also found a high-quality source for making the printed postcards – it's Moo – and I've created a couple of sets of 24 cards. Readers had asked about T-shirts in the past and I'm exploring a local supplier with some nice 100% cotton merch. I've been trying to stay away from the drop-shipping-machine, and the drip-shopping-machine... My friend D proposed - The Serendipity-Machine - which is way more interesting. I'm all for it, I've always been a big fan and so I have added a donation button to the site - no pressure :-)

You can check out the fledgling line of merch here:

re-visiting the old - as boundaries slip.

With all this talk of enchantment, I was reminded of an earlier post I made here about a dream – accompanied by the dreamy sounds and visualizations of Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily

[When they] first shared a stage together in New York in 2018, it became unclear who was leading whom, or even where one musician ended and the next began: “We were like a school of fish,” Aftab marveled...
Pitchfork, February 24, 2023, Philip Sherburne.

As always, thanks for reading and indulging! – I'm back at it!
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