After spending the past two months working two jobs--neither of which I really love--and then spending evenings, sitting down, feeling lost (mentally, emotionally, artistically, creatively, spiritually), I finally found something worthwhile. An old memory card, buried beneath the mundane artifacts of day-to-day living, surfaced in my desk drawer. Opening it, I found magnolias, hundreds of them, when most of the ones on the tree outside my window have already withered and died in the late July heat.

I have not written poetry in seven months. I have not developed what I consider decent photography in many more. And I have not sketched a portrait in ages. This is me, artistically dead, and so afraid to begin again. That nagging fear of mediocrity, just failure by another name, threatens to stifle me again.

I have squandered a good deal of the summer, but I cannot spend any more time lamenting that. Now, I must listen to that crazy child in my head, following wherever it leads, and it begins with these magnolias.

As e.e. cummings once wrote, "perhaps the thing is to eat flowers and to not be afraid."