Attention

     I love the moment in Lady Bird when the high school counselor says to the main character something to the extent of, “I really appreciated your essay. You clearly love Sacramento.”

     “I suppose I just pay attention,” She says sheepishly.

     “Isn’t that the same thing?” The counselor offers, “Love, and attention?”

     I always cry at that part.

     The time that exists between the moments I am thinking about the past or the future seem oddly rare given the fact that the current moment is my only certainty to consider. I am often married to the idea that peace, solitude, and abundance are things that can only happen in the future if I put my head down now and do “the work.” It turns me into a bit of a chipmunk in both philosophy and practice, constantly storing more nuts and jumping anxiously at small disturbances.

     The ever-elusive joys of an artistic practice are those “things of the future” that bring me the most angst. There is a wide gap, and sometimes endless space, between the doing and the reaping, the investment and the payoff. There is no guarantee that what I make now will serve any other purpose than calling my attention to the exact moment in which I create it.

     And maybe that, alone, is enough.

     But I don’t love that.