Grrr . . .

I am struggling to deal with the wild beasts that have made a home in my painting studio over the past four weeks. Now there's four full-sized hungry growling tigers pacing angrily in there, ready to devour me. They make me grouchy and snarly until I start feeding them oil paintings, then we do okay.

If it does not feed the fire
of your creativity, then leave it.
If people and things do not
inspire your heart to dream,
then leave them.

-  -  -

if what you do and how you live does not feed the fire
in your heart and blossom into poems,
leave, quit, do not turn back,
move fast away from that which would mold your gift,
break it, disrespect it, kill it.

     - Jimmy Santiago Baca, from the poem Ten,
       in Healing Earthquakes, Book V