Beautiful flowers (living! tulips!) were delivered to my casita on Friday — compliments of a very romantic husband — lending their tender spring color to my studio, and swelling my heart with thoughts of their sender.

Here’s my new motto, as inspired by a sign posted along the road to some of the other casitas:

THERE IS STILL TIME TO DO GOOD THINGS.

It is important to remember this. This past week, I finally met a few of the other fellows, and all have commented about how quickly our time at Wurlitzer is passing.  It is beautiful to meet other creative people who are at ease with their work, and their solitude.

Yesterday, going through old files, I rediscovered this pithy quote (in a letter from my mother-in-law, June):

“Solitude brings the raw material of life to the surface of our souls.”
– Joan Chittister, Called to Question

It pairs well with another favorite quote, this one from Baudelaire:

“How mysterious is imagination, that Queen of the Faculties! (….) It decomposes all creation, and with the raw materials accumulated and disposed in accordance with rules whose origins one cannot find save in the furthest depths of the soul, it creates a new world, it produces the sensation of the new.”
(cited by Gerald Weissmann, in “Darwin’s Audubon”)