I mentioned to a friend the other day that the more I learn about dreams, the more it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s been so fulfilling to write about them, in ways that I can’t describe. Maybe I haven’t had that in writing before, where I hit a vein that really gets to my core. Writing is changing my relationship to dreams, and vice-versa; I have a series of dreams about twitter going back a year, it’s like my dreams are very gradually and gently tweet-mentoring me. I continue to be surprised, and it only gets better.

Tuesday night I attempted to begin a short chat about my recent work at NFTuesday, but there was a problem with the projector and my work was rendered invisible, so it was postponed for another time. It was awkward but I can’t even pretend to know what the right order of things is anymore, it seems the universe had better ideas than me about timing. I’ve been a bit awkward in general over the past couple months, what with sharing more digital work and putting out essays and trying to figure out how to do all that, plus the rest of my plate, but it’s growing and I’m very, very grateful.

It’s a feel when a pallet of raw material arrives with a plonk, and just sits there, awaiting transformation into… something.

Back in 2014 when I was spooling up for A house made of air, a flatbed truck arrived one afternoon and dumped 55 sheets of 4’x8’ plywood off the back end. It landed with a ka-bam.

Richard Swayze, the artist-craftsman advising on the feasibility of the sculpture I had in mind standing up properly, looked at me like I was nuts. He cocked an eyebrow that asked, pointedly, do you really intend to rip an absolutely mental amount of ply into this multi-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle you’ve (somewhat vaguely) proposed? I did. He didn’t know me yet; there was an I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it-Kristin vibe. I looked at me like I was nuts too. So it begins.

Wish I had a pic from that day. By the time of the above work-in-progress shot, the stomach-churning pile of ply (at left) had dwindled.

This one shouldn’t be so difficult, are my famous last words every time. But really, this one should be much easier….

Pictured mid-coffee break. People wax on about the flavortudes of wine, which is a topic I should theoretically know something about, having been to idiosyncratic wineries on a majority of continents. It’s very nice, is my opinion. Coffee, on the other hand, is high-stakes and a matter of the utmost discernment. I get wistful thinking about 2013-era Kuma, in those days a did-it-when-he-felt-like-it roaster’s roaster (literally, that’s who my roaster friend fan-boyed for) in Seattle whose beans bloomed like liquid magic. We never know what the next cup might bring.

As we know I love a consult, so I reached out to Sasha Chapin for writing coaching and he lit a fire under my atmospheric ramblings.

First, I had to throw open the doors and windows of sayability in the house of my own mind.

Second, I knew he was going to tell me so, and then he told me so—write a stupid amount very, very fast with absolutely zero regard for quality. Which I did. Turns out that’s liberating, even fun, who knew. Well, Sasha did.

All that’s gestating, work-in-progress, but it’s no doubt the speediest 20k words I ever did see.

Side note, I’ve always kind of idly wondered why I made a blog tag called “epigraphs.” I did it without much conscious intention, which is a feature, because in the creative process things shouldn’t make too much sense. I mean, if it makes sense at the start, you already get it, what’s to discover. Dig a little deeper. Anyway, while writing 20k words very fast, without adequate time to censor myself, after how many years I finally encountered my writing denial, shook its hand, thanked it for its service, and realized I really am supposed to write a bunch of stuff after the frontispiece, lol.

For reals, I had no idea how much I needed a tuned pro to read what I was up to and zoom-call-encourage more of it. Seeing the best in each other is a gift. I hope to be pretty good at doing that for others, steadily getting better. Though my biggest thanks are for all you, who day in and out do it too.