The west coast is on fire right now. Amidst this destruction, I feel an aching urge to create – to write, to draw, to paint – and I feel stifled and disoriented and smothered at the same time. How to touch this heartache with words or colors on paper, when reality is so unreal? How to tune into the pain of the world without losing myself entirely within it? Or maybe that’s the point – to lose myself entirely, to surrender to the burning chaos and finally open my eyes to the heart of the flame.
Oh, my home, my beautiful Oregon, how can I hold you when you’re burning? How can I honor your losses when I have known so little of you, when places I’ve never seen exist for me now only in flames and ashes? I want to cherish their beauty but I have no memories to honor, and that is my loss to bear, to grieve and to honor. I ache for the memories I will never have, and for those I long to create.
And so I set out to create small things of beauty in whatever way I can, to bring some light and meaning to this nothingness that engulfs the land. Small things of beauty made up of words, of colors, of lines on paper, that in the end mean nothing but what they stir in the hearts of those who find solace in them. Words and colors on paper, braving the flames, willing to rise and fall as ashes when the burning ends.
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