When the muse arrives… but forgets to bring directions
Dispatches from beneath the cerebral cortex.
To do or not to do — the question that taunts me daily.
My art lives somewhere beneath the cerebral cortex,
rolling its eyes while I attempt to decipher myself.
Caught in the midst of glimpsing —
a syndrome of devouring previews,
the temptation to be everywhere at once,
to taste every discipline before committing to any.
In the quiet pause between ideas, I often find myself here —
caught between forms, between voices,
trying to make sense of the creative storm.
Some days the light feels like a blessing,
other days like a question I’m not quite ready to answer.
But this is where artistry actually lives:
in the confusion, the curiosity,
and the courage to keep showing up
even when the path ahead dissolves into uncertainty.
Words are transcendent, agnostic, asynchronous.
Their beauty lies in their deceptive simplicity —
each word, each pause, each new beginning
holding a pulse of emotion,
an undertone of meaning that lingers in the reader’s mind.
It is easy to forget images or paintings;
every brushstroke, every hue,
every curve or dent in metal and wood sculptures
carries symbolism —
yet these are abstract languages
that cannot be borrowed or quoted by another artist.
In physical art, one may follow another’s technique,
but the essence — the soul of the work —
cannot be replicated.
Visual art is uniquely interpretive.
Influence can be shared,
but meaning remains deeply personal.
And the pursuit is immense:
a visual artist must find their own voice,
discarding countless ideas along the way.
Writing, however, breathes differently.
It can communicate immediately —
clear, precise, fluid.
Words are channels of communication,
malleable mediums that can be shaped,
softened, sharpened, or reimagined
without ever losing the heart beneath them.
Visual and physical art demand immediacy,
commanding attention through form and presence.
But their meanings are fixed within the boundaries of the medium —
less fluid, less flexible,
less willing to shift their message
without altering the material itself.
To succeed in visual art,
the voice must be unmistakable.
While an artist may evolve across decades,
their early impressions often become permanent markers
in the world’s memory.
To move beyond them requires mastery —
not just of one discipline,
but of many.
Each medium becomes its own language,
its own way of seeing,
its own method of becoming.
Artistry is not a path but a pulse —
a slow, stubborn becoming.
And each day, I return to it.
And so the riddle repeats —
my art sighing beneath the cerebral cortex,
waiting for me to stop dramatizing the process
long enough to coax a hesitant idea
into the courage of existence.
Dispatch II — The Third Knot
Some knots are not made — they are earned.
The sea keeps what it touches, and returns it knotted.
The body remembers long before the mind does.
Every knot: a trial, a test of faith.
My hair never resolves itself
after my company with the ocean.
It carries salt like an oath—
one the sea renews
each time I enter.
The first time it happened
was Dubrovnik — the sea’s echo caught in my hair,
refusing to let go until Zagreb.
There, three women surrounded me like witnesses,
their hands working through the snarl
as if performing a rite of unbinding.
Each loosened strand felt like a release,
a small exorcism of days held too tightly.
And when the last knot fell away,
so did something in me —
I was freed.
The second time was Cyprus—
a place where the sea feels personal,
where the blue is warm
and deceptively gentle.
There, the water gripped me again,
twisting my hair into another
tight, stubborn snarl,
as if the salt wanted to keep
a part of me for itself.
And now Greece—
the Adriatic has not just tangled
but knitted my hair,
as though it has grown bolder
with each encounter.
The knots this time
are larger than before,
dense as unspoken thoughts,
ropes made of days spent drifting
between who I was
and who I am still becoming.
It is always the sea
that does this to me—
that gathers my hair
like a net gathering what floats too long
between places.
Each knot is a timestamp, a sacred binding:
Zagreb, Cyprus, Greece—
an accidental trilogy,
a quiet devotion,
a crown of resilience
I wear on my head.
And when I finally sit down
to work each tangle loose,
I am undoing more
than seawater.
I am loosening the parts of myself
the world tried to keep.