A Blinker Speeds Up

A blinker goes out, cherry blossom quotes, and journal prompts for April reflection

Amy Cowen

Mar 31, 2024

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(Prefer to listen in podcast form? Pull up Episode 491 of the Creativity Matters Podcast.)

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." T.S. Eliot

Happy Sunday!

Maybe it’s a holiday weekend for you. Maybe there are eggs, real or plastic, chocolate bunnies, squishy things, and colorful traditions.

It’s been years since we hid plastic eggs in our little living room for the kids to find, but I loved those egg hunts. When the eggs ended up in the basement the last time, there must have been candy left in one of them that rodents later found, little bits of shredded foil wrapper telling the tale.

I kept my Sunday open this week, just in case I might have the chance to see my oldest son before his next quarter of graduate school starts. He had a short break, but he had prelims scheduled, and in the days before those, he got sick.

It is interesting sometimes how we keep doors open, just in case, on the off chance, because we cannot help but hope…even if we never say a word.

He came home, unexpectedly, for an overnight mid-week. We slowed down time and watched 3 Body Problem through the long afternoon. (This Netflix series is based on a trilogy by Cixin Liu, which begins with The Three-Body Problem.)

The next day, we weighed our “walk” options and headed to the disc golf course. We were waiting in traffic, turning left to get back to the main road after I missed the turn, and the blinker’s rhythmic clicking sped up. It was as if a pulse started racing, suddenly out of sync. We drove on, and as we made another left turn, it did it again. The normal steady blinking skipped a beat and sped up. “Do you hear that?” I asked, afraid it might be just me. “It’s like it’s getting ahead of itself.”

The asynchronous sound of the blinker was alarming in some oddly visceral way. “Are you hearing that?” I thought of the numbers one of the scientists sees in the beginning of 3 Body Problem, a countdown only she can see. I thought about Wendy Mitchell’s account of suddenly not being able to, literally, make a right turn. I thought about having just explained the slightly paranoid reason for the peppermint smell as we got in the car. I thought about how much has changed since my car was totaled and how different things feel. I thought about having just asked him if he is any closer to learning to drive.

With each left turn, the blinker started normally, skipped a beat, and then accelerated, a drummer out of sync.

After walking through the trees for 18 holes and enjoying a bit of fresh air, the cacophony of bird sounds, and the flashes of blue as a Steller’s Jay skipped across branches, again and again, always overhead, we turned right and right and right again on the way home. No problems. Everything is fine. We can’t afford a car problem. But then there was a left.

We were waiting to turn left as a Muni train turned left from the crossing street. It seemed we would be squashed as we sat in our space at the red light. “You are too far up, in the crosswalk,” he said. But I wasn’t. The train was on its metal track. There was room for us both, but as the train turned, it seemed impossible that it would clear us.

Perspective can sometimes make us hold our breath.

I turned left, and the sound of the blinker again was too fast. The subtle acceleration had disappeared. It was simply too fast. As we neared home, I thought about it and realized we should check to make sure the light was blinking. “Maybe it’s a fault,” I said. “Maybe that sound is an indication that the blinker is out.” Bingo.

That night, we watched Interstellar. I hadn’t seen it before, but it’s come up a few times in the last few months. He had mentioned it, too, when he first told me about the 3 Body Problem.

“Aren’t there parallel timelines in this movie,” I kept asking. With thirty minutes left, I still wasn’t sure how that was going to come into play.

I was thinking about April and Easter and the end of March and the idea of eating the frog (as a productivity approach). I was thinking about my vague confusion over things I’ve drawn this year and last year and some other year before and how they often cycle and layer, how my own history of art is a peeling palimpsest, stories and images that blend and blur, the brush of a pen through time.

Is the wallpaper yellow?1 Maybe, but it is beautiful, not frightening. Seeing these bits and pieces, these exposed layers, is comforting. There are echoes and overlaps, layers of art and memory through the years, but they are imperfectly aligned, just a bit askew. This is not a groundhog’s day narrative. This is not a gravity problem. This is not a blinking light, a train on a curved track, or an acceleration. This is not something of consequence. This is simply a recognition of cycles and patterns of flow and attention, but also an awareness, always, of forgetting.

This intro came last, which forced a shuffling and a change in direction because I already had an essay for this week. I shelved that for now, but I also put together a short list of reflective prompts for the coming month and new quarter. Then I got hooked looking at quotes about cherry blossoms.

This post includes:

Have a good start to April.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

Looking Back: Spock and a Stuffed Bunny

I was thinking this week about last year, when I know I drew Spock, prompted by something in the weekly prompts. When I saw “Live Long and Prosper Day” on the Week 13 calendar, I thought that must have been the context, but when I scrolled through my photos, I found that Spock showed up weeks later. It’s interesting how things cycle, but how sometimes the layering is just a bit out of sync.

In scrolling the photos, I saw several that I knew I must have considered drawing last year around Easter. One of them, a child holding a stuffed bunny, caught my eye. “I’ll draw that one this week,” I thought, and I marked it so that I can find it again.

I was still looking for Spock when I ran into the journal pages from this time last year. I had to laugh.

Illustrated journal pages from Illustrate Your Week 2023. Spock portrait and child holding bunny — Illustrated journal pages from Illustrate Your Week 2023. ©️A. Cowen

I drew the child and bunny last year. Seeing the journal page, I recognized the image immediately, but I had no recognition of having drawn it when I saw the source photo. I just knew I liked the photo.

I read books this way. I watch movies this way. It’s worrisome.

But it also means I enjoy things, sometimes multiple times. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s somehow simple to find joy in something again and again.

(Lots of room for Einstein and Sisyphus allusions. I think of them often. They are out of place in the context of forgetting and repeating, but Day 17 was related.)

When it comes to drawing, I think the simple fact is that even though I no longer draw a portrait a day (which I did for several years), over the course of a year, I draw a lot. I draw several portraits a week, a self-portrait a week, multiple things a week based on calendar prompts or things in my house or things I drive by or see while I am walking. I don’t remember every meal I eat. I can’t tell you how many times I had this or that in a year. Knowing what I did or didn’t draw feels similar.

Note: The 2023 Spock drawing emerged from a sign language prompt. (One of my favorite drawings from last year was in this week, too.)

Journal Reflection for April

Here are ten journal prompts for April. These are prompts you might sit with or write about, not necessarily prompts to inspire drawing.

1. Five questions you should ask a loved one or family member now.
2. Five questions you have about your past, things you don’t remember.
3. What is stopping you from doing the “life thing” you need to do? Is the stumbling block real? What steps can you take to move forward?
4. How is April this year different from last year? Different from five years ago?
5. What is on your mind and preoccupying your thoughts? Is it healthy? Is it helpful? Is it energizing? Is it paralyzing?
6. If you set goals at the start of the year, how are they going? Is there anything you can reset or reconnect with in the second quarter of the year?
7. If you chose a word for the year at the start of the year, are you keeping it in mind? Is it proving helpful?
8. What one thing would make a difference in your day or week?
9. What one new project would you like to work on in April?
10. What affirmation do you need to keep in mind right now?

To Letter

I love writing sayings, quotes, definitions, bits of verse, haiku, and other strings of words in my illustrated journal. My journal pages are often more “words” than art, something that hasn’t changed through the years even though I always hope to increase the balance of illustration.

As April starts, here are a few “spring” and “cherry blossom” quotes you might find inspiring. Maybe you will letter one of these in your journal this month:

What a strange thing!
to be alive
beneath cherry blossoms.
Kobayashi Issa

“I have a pretty good memory, but memories are time beings, too, like cherry blossoms or ginkgo leaves; for a while they are beautiful, and then they fade and die.”—Ruth Ozeki2

Between our two lives there
is also the life of the cherry
blossom.
Matsuo Bashō

I’d like to divide
myself in order to see,
among these mountains,
each and every flower
of every cherry tree.
Saigyō

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Woods were ringed with a colour so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a colour at all. It was more the idea of a colour — as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts.” — Susanna Clarke

“We'll make friends with the wind and sky and sun, and bring home spring in our hearts.“ — L.M. Montgomery

Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he's gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.”
―Mary Oliver, from “In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music,” A Thousand Mornings: Poems

Illustrated Journal Week 13 for 2024

This is a glimpse of part of my pages for Week 13 for Illustrate Your Week 2024.

Week 13 illustrated journal page — Portion of Week 13 2024 illustrated journal page. @ A. Cowen

I chose a Vulcan hand sign-themed image instead of Spock. I do know that a Spock drawing this year would be different than last and different again tomorrow. The daily notes that surround the page, mostly out of sight, ground the drawings in life and are always going to vary, day to day and year to year.

The Weekly Bits and Pieces

💭 100 Day Project / Comic Affirmations 36-42

🎯🖋️ Week 14 prompts for your illustrated journal

Writers to Read

Here are some posts from other writers that I enjoyed in the last week or so:

Sunrise Brings Heaven to Earth (Jonathan Potter) — a wonderful poetry substack and breathtaking photography
Making a Poetry Comic (Grant Snider) — such a beautiful look at his process
How to Write Memoir that Makes Room for Your Reader (Slant Letter)
bog standard ( Laura Babcock )
An argument for stopping the STOPS (Melissa Lowenstein)
Finding more ways to share poetry (Jason McBride)

Made It?