I know. It has been too long. I have been journaling like crazy, but not sharing my pages on this site. It’s time to fix that. I did this page on 16 May 2005. Oops. I can’t believe it’s August already. Anyway, I wanted to talk about how I often journal without using words. Sometimes a feeling can be best articulated with an image. I find that if the rest of me is still - if I can simply be aware of what I am feeling, a clear, distinct image often forms in my thought that expresses precisely my internal landscape. This image just showed up in my head while I was in PA on a school visit trip talking about the children’s books I write & illustrate. I painted it in my cheap hotel room, where I stayed alone for 4 nights - in between visiting elementary schools during the daytime. The kids were wonderful, but I was ready to be home. This picture comes from a vast, hollow feeling that was living in my chest during that time. But there is also beauty there. I learned about 10 years ago that there is a way to make something beautiful out of just about any kind of hurt. And if you don’t find the beauty - if you don’t look through whatever is troubling you to find that pearl of discovery, then there really isn’t any point in putting yourself in a place where you can get hurt. It’s not sublime. It’s just terrible. But if I look straight at it, I can see through it.