Paintbox

My head is spinning from all the inspiration I've been soaking up and the conversations and writing exhanges that Cat and I have had over the last couple of days.

It's hard to blog while being here in Silicon Valley as I'm just chilling out really - I promise that you will have lots of photos to feast your eyes on and anecdotes to read when I get to Bali.

On Sunday, Cat and Niall took me to the Cantor art museum where Rodin's work, including The Thinker is. Now I tend not to like what the status quo says I should like so I happily skipped past his works and was on a mission to find other treats, like this stunning mosaic:


Although, my camera wasn't on top form in this museum - it's so hard to capture the beauty in such a place because of the glare from glass or the lighting etc etc

I was a little dissapointed when I got to the Native American wing to find that it was not a wing but a corner and in that corner there were about three things. But one of the pieces took me straight back to the Navajo Nation, an artist's response to the ancient myth of the prankster, Coyote who threw the stars up into the sky:


Everything in my body danced, much like Coyote here, when I got to the print pieces where first edition books were kept, including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and A Christmas Carol. They sat behind glass -all beautiful, all crinkly and tea-stained looking from age. I got a couple of snaps before security told us off for taking pictures because these weren't owned by the gallery - even though there wasn't a sign to say we couldn't. So this was the best I got:


Can you hear my squeals?


As I walked through this museum with the best person I could have gone through it with, narrative and tangents were streaming in my head. I'm closer to tapping into that place, that turbine that is powered by the absolute need to write; something will unlock, I can feel it. Sooner hopefully rather than later, I will have the force to write a novel and throw out poems with ease.

Last night, Niall headed off to a poker game while the two of us stayed in and gabbed on and on, a "power gabble" Niall called it when we described what we had been doing for five hours. Cat read me some of her work and I read her some of mine. We tried to shape into words, the expression that we were both longing to achieve. She recommended me poets and I sent her photography; both of us in a tornado of verbal creativity that cannot be accurately replicated with another person or in any other space or time.

Not only have I enjoyed walking my inner labyrinth towards something sacred, and I continue to do so, I am now equipped with so much material upon which to reflect - my paintbox has been restocked and I go forth with a little more confidence now and a couple of gifts that Cat has given me, including a music box that plays What a Wonderful World.