A sticky note of thankfulness and lots of crows

Sunday musings, journal peek, and prompts for week 3 of Illustrate Your Week for 2024

A weekly digital comic project I am continuing to explore and shape. A. Cowen, 2024

Hello and happy Sunday.

We could be friends, you and I. I like to think we could be friends. I like to think in some alternate space, I am a person worthy of having a friend.

Funny how such a simple sentence makes tears well, pool, and fall. They splash to the page, and I stand, stretch, think about coffee, think about the fact that I am tired, acknowledge that I am wasting the scant minutes of weekend thinking about the realities of playgrounds and school cafeterias.

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

— T. S. Eliot

I shared notes on Week 2 of reading Sidewalk Oracles this week. The frameworks of I Ching, Orenda, Speaking Land, and Wyrd were all outside of my core of knowledge and understanding. I know nothing about Jung.

There were crows and ravens this week, twice in one day, bookending a few minutes sitting in front of the fireplace at the library. And then again the next day. I have been trying to sort out if it is one or the other or both. Long ago, in a bird year, I thought there were ravens. I took scores of black-and-white photos of gigantic black birds on a fence, birds I knew could have carried my toddler away. I drew birds. I studied guide books.

Through the years, I began to assume the ones I see frequently, the ones that often dance on the roof, are crows. It doesn’t seem likely that my symbols are ravens. What walked out and across my path as I walked up the sidewalk…. surely a crow. On the light post as I drove under an hour later…. Surely a crow. But those were definitely croaking noises as I walked beneath the trees yesterday. Crows or ravens; ravens and crows. One or the other or both.

These are not my only birds, but they have been persistent in these days, persistent in getting my attention. It seems I am supposed to notice, but I don’t know what message they carry, what I am supposed to interpret or take from them.

These birds, of course, are in the land of the symbolic, the whimsical, the wishful. But in the real world, in the day to day full of obligations and tasks and worries, what can these birds really offer?

I am straddling the gap between worlds, trying to find footing, trying to weave and blend and find meaning. I am threading needles with trust and hope and faith and prayer, grace and gratitude, and a willingness to believe.

Thank you for your comments, for reading and letting me know you were here, for bird walking with me, for following breadcrumb trails and crumbling crackers of your own to help line the path, for leaving a small note tucked into the pages of this week, stuck on the cover or lodged in the center fold.

Amy

Our deepest fears are like dragons, guarding our deepest treasure. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Week 2 Illustrate Your Week

As I write, my pages are still in progress for the week, but here is a glimpse of part of Week 2 of #illustrateyourweek for 2024. I especially enjoyed drawing this kid with crown and cape (a muse image from the Sktchy Museum app).

Illustrated journal page. A. Cowen 2024

A Yellow Sticky Note

A yellow sticky note found inside the library copy of Sidewalk Oracles I checked out.

After I finished my Sidewalk Oracle notes for the week, I remembered, absently, that there is a note in my book. It’s a yellow sticky note that is adhered to the inside cover.

When I first picked up the book and discovered this note, it was, of course, a welcome sign, a moment of connection with some unknown and unnamed reader who traveled these pages before me.

During my “50 Before 50” year, one of the things on my list was to leave a series of letters in library books. Maybe they shook out in the process of being checked in and shelved. Maybe they were well nestled and were discovered by a reader at some point. Maybe some are still inside books, on shelves, waiting.

The sticky note in my library copy of Sidewalk Oracles is written in tidy cursive. It looks like ballpoint to me. It makes me think, not of myself, but of my grandmother. It isn’t a message. There is no “dear reader” quality to the note. It is an “I give thanks” note.

I wondered about the note.

I left it in place.

After finishing my Week 2 notes, very late, very behind, after an incredibly stressful and busy work day and then a few hours at the hospital, dodging rain and worrying about parking limits, and seeing the doubled water bill, and carefully not looking in the basement, and knowing my mood was brittle…. I remembered the note. Flipping to the inside cover, I looked again at the words and realized they are from Chapter 2. These words are the final words in the summary of Orenda:

I give thanks for the morning

I give thanks for the day

I give thanks for the gifts and the challenges of this lifetime

I wonder about the person who took time to rewrite these words on a yellow sticky note, knowing that final line is more difficult than it seems, the person who wrote these words and then left them behind.

Read-Along

You are welcome to join us. We are reading slowly, and the pace will slow even more in coming weeks because there are a series of actionable exercises or training games to encourage you to explore and invite awareness of symbol and serendipity in your life. To learn more, see the timeline.

• Timeline

• Week 1

• Week 2

What do you stand to lose? What do you stand to gain? What questions are you asking in this new year? What questions are you afraid to ask?

Illustrate Your Week

If you haven’t considered keeping an illustrated journal, or you are still trying to get started, I encourage you to grab a sketchbook or journal and make a note today.

🎯🖋️ The Week 3 prompts for Illustrate Your Week offer ideas to help fill in around your daily documentation.

Share the Love

Here are a few things I read this week that I really enjoyed, found thought-provoking, or found moving.

• Untangling my word of the year by

  Amanda B. Hinton
  (The Editing Spectrum)

• Do You Want His Rings by

  Mary Roblyn
  (Wri/ter Interrupted)

• God Freakin’ Help You by

  Elizabeth Beggins
  (Chicken Scratch)

• iPad by Justus (Grizzly Pear Jr.) - I love his series of hands

(My experience with Notes is that the same names and publications are often shared over and over. I hope you seek out and find and read broadly. Some people walk into this space and gain 5,000+ followers in a day. Others struggle for every 100. Follow links. Share things you love.)

Made It?

Your words last week were wonderful, H words that ran the gamut. It always intrigues me to see how this exercise goes. I might pull out harmonica, hymn, hieroglyph, hazy, halcyon, and hummingbird. Heart, heal, and hard come up the hallowed path, and hasten seems intent on joining, on heaving itself into the haphazard mix. History, a hammock strung between two tall trees, also has a hand in the air. What do we hear?

In addition to a poignant inky comment heralded by hey, hah, and huh, here are some of the H words you collectively shared:

• Habaneros

• Haiku

• Hamster

• Hare

• Harmony

• Hatter

• Haughty

• Haunting

• Heart

• Hearth

• Heather

• Heavenly

• Hedgewitch

• Hereditary

• Heuristic

• Hiccup

• Hilarious

• Hippopotamus

• Hirsute

• Hokey-pokey

• Holiday

• Home

• Honesty

• Hope

• Hugs

• Humongous

• Humor

• Hygiene

Laura shared a haiku:

H haiku

I wake, hagridden,

Harried by hardy hirsute

Hellions.  Hist! Hist!

This week, I invite you, as always, to jump in in whatever way feels comfortable. There are a small number of people stopping by, and I enjoy hearing what you think, what resonates, and what poems are floating in front of you.

• What was in your cup today?

• Three positive adjectives (beyond “beautiful” or “pretty”)

• An affirmation

• Something you want to draw this week

If you are new here, I would love to have you say hello!

Someone mentioned last week that they don’t use Instagram and were glad that I included a sample of my weekly illustrated journal. That comment was really helpful for me! Thank you, too, to those who have commented on the comic art and digital pieces I’ve shared.

Thank you to those who have recently subscribed and to those who have upgraded to paid subscriptions. I am so appreciative of your support and for your help in keeping content free for those who can’t afford to pay to read everything they enjoy.

💡As a reminder, I draw with a small group of women on most weekends via Zoom. If you are interested in learning more, let me know.

Quick Question

As I rapidly approach a milestone here in this space (I know, I know, I’m sorry to those of you who wish I was more diligently recording instead of spending time here), I am curious about the following.

If you are new to my work (or to any writer’s work), do you go back, poke around, and read older pieces? Do you dig deep? Or do you read one or two, look at the trail of past posts, feel tired, and resolve to simply “start where you are”?

I am putting together a list of some older posts, that I’m sure were not seen by many, so I’ve been thinking about this and about how we approach a new feed.

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