...and another back.

My novice attempts at masters' tools make the seemingly easy, staggeringly slow. With little to show for almost three days work other than a few new brushes, my hope of an immediate collection turns ambitious while something bigger still eludes me:

After all, now that I have all these empty canvases, what exactly do I say with them all?

With time turning against me, it feels fitting somehow that today marks the first day of Prague snow.

One step forward...

Four weeks out from the creative shift, and another four from when we began the October road trip with its month of foggy skies that followed. That makes four weeks left to make my mark before getting swept back away until spring.

And so ends the free flow of searching out and experimenting, and so begins the hammer and nail work of creating the collection from the ground zero and making sure everything is neat and trim by the time New Years rolls around.

Crazy. Compared to my original vision, I could not have imagined a more alternative scenario:)

Turning point

Until a couple hours ago, it felt like today had been laboriously, and painfully, unfruitful. Ten hours between Daddy duties, and not a pixel was sticking. In a self-defeating moment there, I even began to question whether I've confused tunnel vision with being blind.

But then, one never knows when inspiration will come knocking:)

In some midnight moment of divine intervention, the visual path that has eluded me has become suddenly illuminated under exclamation marks that finally provide some type of visual clarity.

However that path continues from here, at least an overall direction is definitely beginning to appear, and with it a new voice, and new language I've only begun to learn. It's been no easy feat connecting old dots with new tools and techniques, but after tonight, I feel more and more actually capable of such a radical departure.

The question, as always, is where it will go from here.

Plan X

The new direction I have begun to take on the road from Plan A has become a Rubik's cube of possibilities that are inspiring as they are intimidating and humbling.

Feeling enlightened one day and in the dark the next, my creative compass moves between what appears to be a straight path to the new collection, and totally unexplored territories far off any personal map.

Surprising even myself, I have put down the mouse and picked up the paint brushes, pencils and crayons of my childhood, and resigned my camera as a tool to simply capture, for a world in which I feel far more propelled to create.

Reconciling ability with ambition, however, is no easy feat when at the bottom of a new learning curve, and made even trickier while trying to connect them to a personal style I have spent years defining and refining.

(Combined on top of my usual Daddy duties and running StarBright, it's no wonder why I haven't seen my pillow before 2:00 am since we got back home almost three weeks ago!)

Where exactly it will go from here is still a bit of a mystery. What I do know, however, is that I have opened a door that I'm not sure I can ever totally close. Both my perceptions and expectations have changed and I have no doubt that the evolution will be for the better.

Back to the Future:)

The idea of turning October's misfortune into something completely different than what was planned, has definitely turned me on.

I'm imagining Picasso, Monet, and Dali happily lost in the woods of Algonquin, drinking Svarak, and German wheat ales. Alone, together, and inspired to capture the gravity of Fall. But just before the party gets started! Nick Night suddenly appears with a couple acrobats and starts smoking a little weed:)

All lenses and brushes fully exposed.

Oh so good to be back to where the new wind blows:)

To Fall, or not to Fall?

As always, it seems like time is moving faster than I. More has happened since my last entry here than I can remember, let alone recount, but Lora astounds me every day and makes me want to live life to the fullest. I'm amazed at how little means so much, and how much can seem so little.

Home has been a pretty long plane ride from work for a good six of the last ten months, as I flip the double-edged sword that both gives and takes from my family. While together, we  have camped under wild skies among bears and wolves, and spent mornings on pause, inventing stories about zebras and monsters while we roast leaves on imaginary fires to warm infinite tiny fingers.

Above all commercial gain, and all artistic expression, it should be said that those little zebras and fires of fatherhood are the masterpieces of life that no art can fully imitate. Of this, I finally understand, and resign.

Regretfully, I truly wish I made more time to record all the steps in between... but then again I suppose there should be little to complain about that when life is has than the container that I can fill it with.

On a personal, more creative note, it has been almost one month since I took the phone out of my clients' hooks to pursue a new Autumn Collection, but the clouds persists, as do the green leaves that show no sense of time.

Either I will get lucky with a new forecast before time runs out, or I will be forced to move in other directions... which may ultimately find something deeper than what I was originally looking for.

Out of the pot, into the pan

Have been home for three days now, and likely another three away from finishing all my post-production from the prior 47 days. To say I'm running on fumes is an understatement impossible to properly quantify.

China, Singapore, and Madrid were all blurs... China being the low-point considering the complete and total communication ban in light of the Tienanmen anniversary (read: no email, YouTube, Google, Facebook), and the final weekend in Madrid as the high-point. Thank you Plaza Major.

It's ironic that I had been counting down the days until I finally get to settle back at home and enjoy the summer without having to get an another plane, but then, when has Plan A ever gone according to Plan A?!!

At least this time Z and Lora will get to join me as we board the plane together, which we'll be on in exactly a week, bound for a few weeks in Toronto. Despite my brother's fairly strong sales pitch, even a week ago there was no convincing me we would make the trip this year. That said, parenthood puts things in a whole new perspective:

Just as there isn't anything I wouldn't do for my daughter, I realize more than ever the sacrifices my own mother has made for me over the years. If it's her wish to see her grand daughter, then who am I to deny?

And so the whirlwind continues....

37 down, 10 to go!

Doha, Qatar, Day 37

Departure day!!!! I decided to celebrate my last night with a proper steak and a few pints. Oh, the luxury:)) It's amazing how, after two weeks of drinking almost nothing but bottled waster, 3 pints of beers has me feeling like a ninth grader doing beer bongs in the high school bleachers. The euphoria of the subsequent buzz was probably not well served given the strangely sleepless night (and stupid facebook posts) that has followed, but considering I still feel well enough rested, so worth it!

Despite my glee at leaving this place, I do have to admit that I feel a shameful sense of missed opportunity here. Given that this place might as well be on the other side of the galaxy, there are no doubt photo opportunities here seeped in exotic tradition beneath the desert sands and Gucci veils I have yet to even sniff. I could survive cost of living for a little while, but that heat?! From that heat, there is no compare, and no escape.

No escape that is, until 2:00 pm today when I board the plane to Guangzhou!!

Stranger than Fiction

Day 19,  Prague airport.

I suspect some things may just never come easy. Saying goodbye to Z and Lora has to be pretty close to the top of that list. The 2 days I've had to reset back in Prague after the States has done wonders to break up this assignment, but is also serves as a painful reminder of all that I'm missing on the road. It's pretty intense that, as someone who has usually had a pretty easy time bidding farewell, I can't help but feel like a sobbing mess inside when it comes to my own flesh and blood. Such, I have learned, is the bond of parenthood.

To compound the emotions, the timing of my arrival in Bangkok couldn't have come at a more precarious time. As of two days ago, the Thai military has declared Martial Law in a coup designed to overthrow the government, which appears to have been successful. What exactly will be waiting for me, along with the Thai people, remains to be seen. Curfews have been imposed on all citizens, and all schools have been declared closed at the time of this entry. The nervous curiosity tingles through my body as I begin to wonder how this will all play out.

And in a true stroke of truth-is-stranger-than-fiction, my subsequent destinations do little more to soothe a wary soul. Qatar, located smack dab in the middle of an area in the Middle East that continues to be affected by some deadly respiratory disease, MERS, will be my next, and longest stop. Then assuming I get through Bangkok and Doha OK, I just hope Guangzhou will be far enough removed from the terrorist attacks in China that claimed the lives of almost 40 people less than a week ago. The carrots at the end of the stick are a day in Singapore and a weekend in Madrid before I see myself finally return home.

26 more days, and an infinite kaleidoscope of the unknown between this airport and home.