Hey dear people,
We’re in Berlin. Yesterday, we schlepped our luggage, mostly baby things, to a place across the city from where we were staying earlier this month. It’s sunny here. I’ve sopped up the morning with bread and coffee.
Where we’ve settled into is the apartment of two artists. The rooms and long hallway are decorated with colorful sculptures and paintings. Lots to tempt Baby Arlo, just out of reach. It’s bright and airy with twelve-foot ceilings and windows that face a leafy courtyard. How I’d imagined European apartments to look. The bedroom has an upright piano, which Arlo will love.
C keeps reminding me I haven’t yet written much about how I make art. Which is true. Maybe it’s easier to share finished pieces than the messy in-between.
This post will be a healthy stretch. The work that gets us somewhere is often as interesting, more maybe, than its culmination.
As we were leaving Zürich, I found a scrappy Nespresso notebook in a free box on the street. It makes a good sketchbook. I recommend something like this: cheap, unprecious, already worn. Discarded things make the best containers for creativity. They don’t demand perfection.
Using a cheap pen also helps. Nothing beloved or treasured. I couldn’t close the pen. I tried forcing it shut against the cover of the notebook and accidentally tore a hole. And so I drew an eye peering out. An opportunity in the unexpected.
While here, I mostly walk around the city with Arlo. I sketch daily. Scribble notes too. In coffee shops, at falafel stands, on benches along the canal.
Recently, I listened to an interview with Suleika Jaouad, whose The Book of Alchemy celebrates the virtues of creative practice and writing. Even the writing or drawing done just for ourselves is often burdened with our preconceptions of what is correct. Maybe we think a journal should only be for writing. No doodles! Or if we were real artists, we’d draw everyday. Or it’s got to be proper pen and paper, not voice memos or typed notes, for it to really count.
But let it be whatever it is! And if you miss a day, try again tomorrow.
Mindfulness has been a companion. I’ve been listening to audiobooks as I walk (praise be Libby, the library app): Why Buddhism Is True, by Robert Wright; Ten Percent Happier, by Dan Harris; Pico Ayer’s Aflame. Also Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is about cultivating creativity and curiosity.
I found a free version of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course, first developed at UMass Medical School by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It’s through Palouse Mindfulness. I recommend it!
Most nights, after Arlo is asleep and the apartment goes still, I sit. The practice is akin to drawing in that both ask for slowness. You stay with whatever unfolds. You keep showing up even when uncomfortable.
Berlin is generous with these small moments—the quiet of a weekend morning as partygoers sleep, a pause before crossing the busy Sonnenallee, our hushed courtyard in Neukölln in the evening. The days themselves are a sketchbook: open, uneven, sometimes messy.
The art isn’t so much in the finished piece or meditation but finding joy in the small moments of our daily lives—through noticing and accepting, maybe even recording, all that’s here.
Any of you care to send me your sketches or doodles? Please! I’m interested in seeing them.
And if you have recommendations for books on creativity or mindfulness, I’d love to exchange resources.
Take care, y’all. Wishing you well out there <3
