Catalyst

What luck! A white rabbit beast has graced my lawn;

While lost, my hand, drags nervously among the grass-

I give its contents to the fresh teeth of my new talisman

And he leaves his burrow to bestow a secret:

“Life is not ringing loud enough,” his lisp declares;

“We must break free of your arms-

 Embrace the plethora of cathartic conversation 

You refuse to believe you can demand.” 

Thus, I leave the church, this first time;

I leave the yard where I cannot sleep!

I watch the rabbits gaze of empathy; the clock timing all that I just lost- 

The rewards of my way home are plotted carefully

In heavy footsteps through bloody yards.

Synchronicity! I left a message for the other side. I will become the person 

My rabbit wants me to be.

Introvert

A rough draft/first writing, but I really wanted to share this. I'll share it again if/when I fix it up.

We found a pet rabbit in the backyard

A skinny, gray rabbit too scared to protest being handled

Too scared to eat, to move, to bite.

She was the timeless children’s classic, the discarded Velveteen,

Except she never found her way back home.

For weeks, she ran from touch. She lunged when I moved a hand toward her nose

She fought and kicked when I tried to pick her up, she grunted at the cat.

For weeks, she was all I could talk about. I shared her picture like a parent

With a new child. I giggled about her grunts, I rolled up my sleeves to

Show off her bites. I told my therapist about her

And she instantly became a metaphor. All her rabbit habits are mine as well:

The distrust, the fear of touch, the hiding and the digging.

I lay next to her cage for hours to gain her trust

The way the rabbit websites told me to

The way I wanted someone to lay next to me.

A co-worker once jokingly called me the rabbit whisperer

Like I have some secret way to communicate and teach a fragile prey animal

To trust, to be comfortable, to eat food from my hands.

But it’s not a secret at all: I and the rabbit have the same wide eyes,

The same speeding heartbeat, the same vigilant posture.

I only treated her the way I want to be treated. 

Problem: creative rut. Solution: a table.

As many of you know my art supplies share a room with two extremely hairy rabbits.  This means that when I want to get creative my projects are likely going to be filled with some of that hair. It also means that I have to make sure that all of my supplies and projects are out of reach of the long toothed little monsters.

Sometimes worrying about the rabbits makes creative action into a chore. If I look away or lose myself in the project -even for a second!- my fuzzy little pets swoop in and start eating something. Sometimes it's a colored pencil, sometimes it's a piece of scrapbook paper, sometimes it's whatever I'm working on at that moment. This often inhibits my creative process.

Thankfully, a few weeks ago, Therese at Arts Marketplace gave me an old cabinet/table that they didn't need anymore. It's a small metal thing with one leg that's shorter than the others and it has a few dents. BUT! It has doors! Metal doors that my militant mutants can't chew through. AND! It has a table top! A table top where I can leave a journal open without worrying about it being detroyed by hundreds of tiny bites.

I treated myself to some expensive paper to decorate the top and this was the end result:

A pretty metal cabinet full of not quite finished projects protected from the gaping jaws of the domestic rabbit.

Plus! Now I have an actual workspace. It's small, but it does the trick. This weekend I accomplished the following:





I was more productive than I've been in months, all because I felt I could get lost in my art journal without worrying about my curious critters getting in the way. What a nice surprise that a simple table could bring such inspiration!