Of Zithers, Zephyrs, and Zeroth Moments

Some unexpected Z-word fun, October drawing, a reminder to fill up, and spinning straw

Woman playing autoharp. Robert Zunikoff, Unsplash.

Happy Sunday everyone!

I am all over the place this week. Every time I cast a mental net about what I would write about, all I heard was “zither.” Zither. Zither. Zither. Zither. (There were some good Z words last week in the comments, thank you.) There was a lot of zithering swirling around this week, but there was a brief moment in which yo-yos and carousels came into view, the one spinning its way in with walk the dog nonchalance and the other prancing into view and then out of sight as if tethered to an invisible orbit.

The yo-yo made sense. Things change quickly. There is the constant feeling of being yanked, of moving up and down, being snapped back with the flick of a wrist. And then there are those times, of course, when you drop a yoyo from the top, and it just spins at the bottom, twirling and untwirling until it stops. Not everyone can walk the dog.

The carousel was out of the blue. I was struck by the sudden thought that I really want to ride a carousel. I think I mostly want the photos. I want to authentically be at a carousel for a photo (to draw of course). There is a gorgeous one here at the pier. It's been a lifetime since I was down there though. It is too hard to park. Too expensive to park. It takes too long to get there. I won't go alone. There is another one closer though.... Maybe I should. 

I find I am tired of doing everything by myself. There is no simple fix for this. The easy answers aren’t really answers. But I am realizing, more and more, that my increasing sense of my world shrinking is intertwined with my growing sense of isolation. 

So carousels, yo-yos, and zithers. That's what I initially came up with when I cast the dice this week and wondered what I might have to say. What I found, in milling through the words and their associations, is that what I really have to say to you is: find a way to fill your well. This doesn't always mean buying something or going somewhere exotic or fancy. Those things might make it easier, but finding ways to replenish can be more simply managed. Be mindful of running on empty.

Today, some October drawing talk, thoughts on the illustrated journal even when life is small, zithers, the prompts for the new week, and more:

• A “Zither” sketchnote

• October drawing starting

• Replenishing

• What to do when nothing seems shiny

• A bluebird drawing & a lumberjack

• Looking with intent (+ a list for when you get stuck)

• Random threads and book reviews

Thank you for reading. If you read and commented last week, thank you. I am grateful for the beautiful way everyone responded. Thank you to those who drew with me last week, too.

Amy

Quotes for the Week

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves…” — Virginia Woolf

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers." — L. M. Montgomery

“Autumn leaves don’t fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.” — Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss

Z is for Zither

Every week, the comments become the unexpected poem, the random and lyrical nature of little bits of shimmer and “I see you” (or “I feel seen”) that are sprinkled in response, generously given, a communal soup being seasoned and stirred. Connecting should be so simple.

Zigger, zag, zealot, zoom, zany, zoo, zebra, zygote, zeroth, zygomatic, zest, zeal, zydeco, zen, zither, zephyr, Zoe, and zinger.

To these I might add ziggy, zenith, zombie, and zipper.

(Zeroth was a delight. I kept hearing it wrongly in my head, an o like moth rather than the long o of zero. A wonderful word tucked away with the offering of a memory of split pea soup.)

Ahhh…. Raspberry Zingers…. an unexpected tangent of memory.

I wish zephyr had lodged, instead of zither. It might have been more peaceful. Zombie…. that one has been in my head as I lined up portraits for October.

October Drawing

With October drawing starting today, there is a reluctant shift. My illustrated journal is worried. I keep hearing its restless fears from beneath the covers. It knows that splitting my energies for Inktoportraits means the journal will lag. It won’t be an even split. I know Inktoportraits might take most of my creative energy, the sliver at night that sits between logging out for the day and falling asleep, pen in hand. Initially, I was hoping to do a digital extension to each daily drawing, a bit of color in contrast to the black and white. (I am a bit worried this series won’t translate well in black and white.) The digital element probably won’t happen. For my illustrated journal, I’m hoping to at least keep up with daily notes and focus on simple contours, icons, and cartoon panels. It’s just a month, I tell myself. (There are a lot of fun things to draw in October though. I’m hoping to fit a lot in.)

While I am worried about keeping up in my illustrated journal, I think occasionally lining up other projects and feeling “committed” to them (or serious about them) is good for us. There can be value in breaking patterns and shaking things up, value in a digression and a divergence. I think this separate October series will be a good shift. It’s time to mix things up, get back to some basics, and do a bit of a deep dive into the disjunct between surfaces and reality.

(See also: Looking back at Inktober and Inktoportraits and the 2023 Inktoportraits prompt set)

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.” — Ernest Hemingway

Replenishing

This weekly pace is fast. How can we show up again and again with something meaningful and new, something pretty or poignant, something thought-provoking or insightful? How can we maintain this pace without a balancing force of influx, inspiration coming in from which to spin and weave? Each week I sit down, gather the threads, and hope to spin straw into gold. There is work involved in such a transformation, not magic. Even so, there are times I wish that when I sat down I would find new piles of shiny fibers at hand, silken, soft, gossamer, supple, not only straw.

Is this true? Maybe. (Shiny new things are always good?) Maybe. But maybe also not really.

I am feeling emptied out and trying to compare that to something. Each week, I pull words from the air and try to weave them into something that has meaning, something that might catch the light, glitter when twisted, something "good enough." Yes, I always hope I will spin straw into gold. But, I am okay with the pile of straw. I find sparkle often happens in the most unexpected moments, in the mundane, the ordinary, the quotidian.

I know straw.

In the early years of the podcast, I wrote and recorded weekly. It is a pace that takes a toll, and sometimes I remind myself that there is a process of filling that is implicit and necessary to support the process of emptying, weaving, and connecting the dots. Having things to talk about requires…. having things to talk about. (Maybe.) I think that there is very little filling in my days at this point.

When Nothing Seems Shiny

People who do Illustrate Your Week sometimes get really concerned about the ways in which a personal illustrated journal, a “diary” of sorts, casts a strong light on our routines, our habits, and the contours of our lives. That’s inherent in the process. When you are keeping a journal that depends on your life, and the circle of your day, if the radius of that circle is small or limited, squished, squashed, or curtailed for any reason, it becomes something you have to grapple with in terms of how you fill your pages.

What is there to record when everything feels the same day to day, when there is more worry than bounty, when there are few treats and nothing is shiny and new? I struggle with this, too. But I find that this is both the challenge and the beauty of the process. The process of keeping an illustrated journal forces (or at least nudges) me to look, find, recognize, acknowledge, and discover. The process reminds me to look for glimmers and to call out gratitudes. The process challenges me to find ways to tuck those things, however small, within my pages, to use them as building blocks, anchors, and glue.

Sometimes the real-life parts in my journal are mostly nestled into the small boxes or circles, whichever I’m using at the time, that contain my daily notes. (Often, those are the parts of my pages I don’t fully photograph or fully share. Journals are inherently private.)

Sometimes the portraits and things I draw are directly from my days, the tuna melt I had at Black Bear Diner, for instance, and sometimes they are pulled from my shelves or related to memory. (I am looking forward to drawing Pez dispensers and ornaments in coming weeks.) Sometimes the things I draw are not directly from my week at all and stem from the Illustrate Your Week prompts.

A Bluebird

I drew a bluebird this week, but not because I happened to stroll through a beautiful forest walkway with dappled light breaking through the canopy and saw a bluebird on a branch. Drawing a bluebird even when I haven’t left the house can still give me space to think and remember. Even in the simplest of contours, other bird stories rise. The blue bird has a place on the pages because, in the process of drawing it, I spent time thinking about it, maybe admiring the blue and the tawny red, maybe marveling over the shape of the talons.

Maybe I thought about the series I did years ago of birds on small tags, bird drawings I worked into quilted projects, birds spotted here and there, mysteries unsolved. Maybe the cedar waxwings came to mind, or the wild parrots, or hummingbirds through the years, my grandmother and her birds, her blue book, cardinals, hummingbirds, and the comfort of a sparrow in a song.

Maybe I thought about last year’s bird and portrait drawings. Maybe I thought of birdhouses and remembered a yard full of them in a house behind a playground when the boys were small, or the tree a few blocks away with dozens of birdhouses hanging from the branches. (I wonder about that tree.) Maybe I remembered white-crowned sparrows, at the park, on the car mirror, in the tree outside the room in Oregon, and now in the bushes in front of the house, layers of memory through the years.

I didn’t need to really see a bluebird for drawing a bluebird to have meaning and become part of my story.

I didn’t need to see a real lumberjack (or heft an axe) to enjoy drawing a simple lumberjack this week.

While drawing what you eat and where you go and what beautiful things you see can offer fodder for your pages, these things are not required. You can draw anything.

Our circles of a day do not have to be more than they already are to find value in the process of keeping a journal. I like to think that in the time that I spend drawing something like a mailbox or a giraffe or a little boy with elf ears wearing a Minecraft pajama shirt that I am mindful in that process. The resulting network of lines on the page has something to do with and to say about me in that moment. So often the portraits I draw seem to have something to say as they stare up from the page. There are many things they might say that relate to the given day, my thoughts, my disappointments, or my joy.

I justify and rationalize. I remind myself of these things I know about keeping an illustrated journal that has meaning to me. I make peace with the contours of my days. I try to find ways to turn straw into gold.

But I do sometimes stop and worry I will run out of gas. Sometimes, I am forced to acknowledge that there is an innate need to fill up.¹ I don’t know that I’m very good at that process, but I try to find simple ways. I try to get better at gathering straw.

The Physics of Empty

Two things came to mind while thinking about what I was going to write about and hearing zither, zither, zither over and over in my head.

One is an experiment in which you poke holes in a bottle of water and nothing comes out. The water doesn’t leak or squirt unless you squeeze.²

The other experiment involves an empty plastic bottle and the fact that the bottle that appears empty is not really empty. If you try to blow a small ball of crumpled paper or aluminum foil into the bottle (lying on its side), you will find that it is difficult, maybe even impossible. (Try using a straw instead.)

I’ll just let those two science moments sit here in the middle of my wonky, wacky armchair creative philosophy. Both came to mind as I was thinking about filling, and wishing that there was a stronger influx of exciting news, sights, sounds, places visited, mysteries uncovered, magic found. 

Looking with Intent

If the well runs dry, which in my fairy tale would mean that I use up all the available straw, what will I have to spin or weave or draw?

What do we do when we bottom out, run out of gas, realize the tank is dry?

Is there really a bottom?

Where can we get straw?

Are we really talking about straw?

Luckily, this type of straw is easy to find. Just a little bit goes a long way. We’ll each find inspiration lurking in different places. Morning hours are golden. Breaking the routine in small ways can make a big difference. Putting myself in the path of things to see… is important. If push really comes to shove, I will find my way to the ocean parking lot where I know the wind and roar will center and ground me. Chances are I walk away with a story about a kite or a seagull or a man on a bench. (The ice cream truck story was a special one.)

Not everyone can drive to the mountains or to the ocean, find a carousel, watch the whales, or even splurge on a coffee. But without going beyond my normal perimeter, I know there are strategies within reach. I know that new things are not the answer and that looking with fresh eyes, hungry eyes, even sad eyes, can lead to new understanding… and straw.

A little self-care, a little realignment, a little refocusing can go a long way.

When you feel stuck in the web of days:

• Don’t forget about gratitude. Starting or ending each day by recording something you are grateful for can be comforting and empowering.

• Don't forget about glimmers.

• Don't forget about looking and really seeing things you otherwise pass by on autopilot

• Don’t forget about light. (You may need to deliberately get up early or take a walk in the evening to catch it.)

• And shadow. Go out at the brightest point of day and take photos of shadows. These can be interesting to draw.

• And trees. What trees do you see? How do they change?

• Your hands. They offer an infinite number of drawing opportunities.

• An apple. Or a pear. Or a lemon. Don’t discount the simple things. Draw, ponder, and be mindful.

• Words. Pick a word and then look for quotes. Write them. Letter them. Illustrate them. Read them out loud.

• Fold something origami. Then draw it.

• Pull a tarot card and draw it.

• Go for a walk.

• Randomly pull a jar or bottle from the refrigerator and draw it.

• Look through a kaleidoscope.

• Toss a penny in a fountain.

• Don't forget about listening. The traffic. The birds. Conversations in line at the pharmacy or the grocery. Things said. The universe speaking. It all counts. It’s all fodder.

Last week, there was a prompt to record something that made you smile. There was also a prompt about something you heard. Those kinds of general (and multipurpose) prompts encourage us to look for something in our days, to be intentional, to recognize and value simple moments. I really appreciate the easy scaffolding. These broad prompts help me find and notice little things, “oh yeah that” or that or “I saw that.” They remind me to be more present.

My son said this during a phone call, and I loved it: “Differential topology is really cool. It’s like doing calculus on a doughnut.”

Random Threads This Week

• I was at the library, one of the two nights I go and sit each week, and someone scared me. There was probably no real or immediate danger, but I felt unsafe. I didn’t want to give into that fear, but I waited until the person, who was wandering, moved out of sight, and I snuck out of the library. It is a ridiculous thing to feel and to think and to say. I snuck out of the library.

• I sat longer than was comfortable because I needed to return a Maira Kalman book, and I wanted to flip through it before I let it go. It is a book that I know I have looked at before, and yet, as so many things do, looking at it felt like the very first time. I was really struck by something almost melancholy in Principles of Uncertainty this time. I sat and flipped through the pages, although my flipping got faster and faster near the end, as the person continued to mill around me, muttering and laughing oddly, an arm across his midsection, clutching his jacket together as if hiding something. Next time I pick up this book, I will also probably feel as if I have never looked at it before.

  Kalman has always fascinated me, and her attention to what she has referred to as the “moments within the moments within the moments” (and that is my paraphrase) has always had deep resonance. I enjoy her art, but I think it is the combination with her words that speaks to me.

  There is an old show. Of course there is. The Moments within the Moments, Episode 197.

  

  Reading Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty at the library.

• I read three graphic novels this week, In by Will McPhail, Tomboy by Liz Prince, and The Parakeet by Espé. The Parakeet was especially haunting. The story of the author, as a child, observing his mother’s struggle with mental illness was heartbreaking. Visualized from the perspective of a child, the story has the blunt edges at times of what a child doesn’t fully understand (but the reader does), and at other times, there is far too much the child knows and has seen and heard and learned. The style of the art is wonderful, the chapters shifting in their use of color and a beautiful and sensitive line to the drawings. The symbolism of the title parakeet is a surprise and a really touching symbol for the story. (Earlier this year I read I, Parrot, which is actually about parrots.)

• The Rumpelstiltskin allusion today surprised even me. I often feel that these newsletters are just the beginnings of things I could someday dive more deeply into. The fairy tale mention makes me think of Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I started it one time and got sidetracked. I think now I should finish it. (Uprooted is the other retelling by Novik. I still want to read the rest of the Winternight trilogy (which begins with Bear and the Nightingale) by Katherine Arden, too.)

• I saw a yard decked out in full-on Halloween decor…. and lights…. one night they were rainbow colored. Two nights later when I passed them again, they were orange, purple, and green.

• The moon. The moon this week was extraordinary.

There is more… the approach of October has had me thinking deeply about rekindling certain habits, tracking (which I do in Notion), and routines and has me missing my morning writing and, especially, time spent looking out the window.

For today, this is enough.

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along!

As always, feel free to rearrange, embellish, and add your own flair and whimsy.

• Do you have a Little Debbie memory, a tiny cake that you associate with something or someone?

• What was the last bird you saw?

• Do you have an October project or something you are looking forward to in October?

• Name a favorite fairy tale.

• Two words that start with C.

Jump in in whatever way feels comfortable. If you enjoy the weekly post or know someone who might enjoy it, please share.

I got caught up with the zither this week, and with the idea of doing more illustrated notes in the space. There's quite a gap between what is in my head and what I seem able to wrangle into being. But I continue to experiment and to think about how to better even things out here, how to ensure there is always a pile of straw, at least, and how to not bottom out. I am thinking, too, of how to break things up for paid subscribers. As I move into fall, I am thinking about it.

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Illustrate Your Week — Week 40

The new prompts for Week 40 have been posted.

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1. After finishing, I thought about Julia Cameron and her concept of “Artist Dates,” which are designed to help us do exactly this, replenish and fill the well. (Artist Dates are part of The Artist’s Way but also were part of Write for Life, which some of us worked through earlier this year.)

2. I am not a scientist, but I work for an organization that writes science experiments for kids.