Paper & Egg

I’m housesitting at the moment, happily tucked away in the countryside, alone with several projects and a few animals. Those animals include two chickens who live waaaaay down the hill toward the bottom of the lane. After the first round of morning coffee and writing, I walk down to the coop with any veggie scraps, feed the hens, and collect an egg or two. I tuck the eggs into a fencepost nook and continue my walk, past barns and vineyards, taking at least an hour until the list of tangibles in my head dissolves and ideas of the heart can blossom. When I return to the base of the lane, I gather the daily newspaper and eggs, and climb the steep hill back to the house. Then it’s round two of coffee and the afternoon work—the stuff that doesn’t need “morning brain.” Some days that’s painting. Some days it’s catching up on pixel work. Often, it’s both.

Even when I’m not housesitting, my days have a similar structure—sans chickens. But when I started hiking back up the hill today, a fresh egg cradled in the Wednesday copy of the Medford Mail Tribune, I thought that “paper and egg” made a nice metaphor for the day’s ritual.

Somewhere on a social media discussion this week, I saw a comment about the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, by Mason Curry. Though the book is on my overlong wish list, I haven’t read it. I looked up the book description and saw that it examines the habits of dozens and dozens of artists, past and present. Apparently—and this was from the lost discussion thread—there are four elements that most successful artists across genres seem to share:

1. Structure

2. Solitude

3. Simplicity

4. Exercise

And despite quoting someone I can’t remember about a book I haven’t read, I felt the “yes” of these enough that this little list stayed with me over the last couple of days and remerged this morning as I finally crested the hill and reached the house with the paper and egg.

In the kitchen, I set a cast iron skillet on the stove and turned on the burner. I thought about it; those four elements aren’t sexy or groundbreaking, but they work. And they are a gift that most of us can open in some way—whether easily when housesitting alone or with admirable effort in a household with a large family.

Today’s simple structure continued after my solo walk—including a very nice egg, over easy, to fuel the next creative project.

As will tomorrow’s….