All you need is a drip. Just a couple drops. And then a whole lot of patience. Before you know it, something unexpected blossoms. From there, the building begins.

I drew this more for myself than anything, a reminder of just how powerful those idle, phone-less moments have been for me these past couple of years. Yes, fatherhood has shrunk the amount of time I have to create. But I’m actually writing more because I’m doing two things: 1) making better use of the time I do have, and 2) savoring those moments of walking or playing with my daughter, where my brain can sit and be patient and slowly wait for something to leak out.

A key example: once we were trying to watch a movie (The French Dispatch) only to be interrupted so often in the first ten minutes by our daughter’s nighttime crying that we wondered if the sound of the TV – which never seemed to carry that far – had somehow awoken her. It turned out she needed a diaper change. But then as I rocked her back to sleep, staring into the dark, a few leaks sprung out the back of my brain and out grew an entire 1st half of a movie I’ve been trying to dream up. The shots. The storylines that weave together. It all came to me so carefully-constructed. I knew the challenge would remain to put it to paper, a translation that is never quite as precise as we’d like it to be. But it’s there. And it all came from a little drip-drip as I rocked in the dark, my daughter rowing towards the shores of Dreamland.

It is probably no coincidence some of the best dripping occurs in the shower. Just recently, I had been trying to work out how to restructure a seven-thousand word first draft of an essay, an accomplishable task which still stressed a brain desperate to relax. Shortly after the glass began to steam up, the drips kicked in. Little by little, vertabrae unspooled, begging me to pull it in alignment. I luxuriated in the feeling of having something. It made the shower that much sweeter. And then I rushed to type it out before it escaped me.

(Sister: I still have the Aqua Notes waterpoof writing pad you so cleverly gifted me; I just to find it first! )

There is much for me to learn from our 16-year-old cat. The way he lounges pretty much all day, saving up his energy for late-night zoomies. The way he can sprint from any situation at a moment’s notice. How he can snuggle in ways blankets never could approach. Whenever we use the bathroom, our 16-year-old cat crowds the sink, awaiting a drip from the faucet. But there’s a particular flow he craves. Drops aren’t enough to get him interested. A rush of water is too fierce. What he requires – and insists upon – is a steady flow, like a perpetual blowing upon a dandelion. Soft enough to be a whisper; steady enough to be a breeze. He knows what will satiate. He knows what will carry him on.

Drips come in many forms. Showers, mindless car trips, sitting in a doctor’s office with my phone in my pocket. The mind needs to the chance to breathe, to drip, to find its way into a steady, satiating leak.

There is no more iconic gateway in my lifetime than Jurassic Park. Burnt into the front of my brain as a child, it’s remained there ever since. It evokes all kinds of feelings: fear, wonder, awe. It’s nostalgic. It’s otherworldly. It’s a reminder in these COVID times that people will, indeed, ignore the greater scientific warnings for their own selfish pursuits.

I’ve been inspired to play with ASL more in my art (something that’s already been done with incredible skill and artistry over the years) just as I’ve been inspired to play with ASL geography in my writing. I have no idea where it will lead. But, for now: welcome.

Whenever I show people the sign for “open”, I always remind them of doors. It seems like the easiest visual, the way our hands are almost perfectly shaped like arched entryways. But the sign can be applied to any number of hinged things.

What I find interesting these days about the sign for open is the placement. If I sign it right in front of the listener, you can open one or both hinges inwards or outwards. Either way, you’re opening yourself up to someone. You’re, as the gate above says, welcoming them.

The life of a disabled person means you’re careful who you’re opening yourself up to. You’ve been there when your story has been used – perhaps many times – for inspiration porn. You’ve seen it misused and misappropriated. You’ve seen the way they keep asking you to dig deeper and deeper, as if your central-most truth is all that different from anyone else’s.

Wings are always a puzzle to draw. There are so many variations of them, from the avian to the reptilian to the angelic. They can be imposing or inviting, nightmarish or holy. They can elevate or behead. They are a bodily form we are still, after all these years, trying to successfully, safely imitate in a more personal way. What marvel is there in flight when 150 people can frequently engage in it all at once?

Inevitably, I split the difference between drawing from memory and reference. I’ll find a picture, give it a shot, and then fill in the blanks on my own. It’s never perfect, but it’s a wing that did not exist before. It’s another footprint to add to the drawing journey.

I don’t remember exactly why I grew the roots at the base of this person, who perhaps quite intentionally looks somewhat like me. But I imagine it had something to do with the warm and #fuzzy feelings of growth that come with getting back to your roots. With simplifying your life. With starting with a pencil, some paper, and a dream. In other words: it’s very much like my writing process. The pieces that I’ve felt the proudest about have come from simply getting back to the basics of what interested, astonished, bewildered, confused, grabbed hold of me. When you start with something you can’t quite let go of, you don’t have to find your way back to it; it will pull you in all on its own. It will make you think, if only briefly, that you can fly. A warm, fuzzy feeling will envelope you. The future will feel brighter and alive with possibility. The gravity will feel less oppressive. You will think you’re flying when, really, you’re floating. Floating on the buzz of creativity sparked.

But all of this comes with putting down that first puzzle piece. That first feather. That first attempt at dreaming a little bigger.

The important thing to understand about this drawing is where things begin. They don’t begin at the roots, like you’d imagine with a tree and its branches. They begin at the typewriter. They begin when the writer sits their ass down and does the work. That’s where the real growth comes from. That’s where the story has a chance to truly take bloom.

Walking my daughter through many miles – some with her staring happily into the sky, some with her sound asleep – taught me the power of idle, undistracted moments. Initially, I lamented the lack of writing time I had. Then, in the weary, golden hour moments of walking, something would sprout through. An idea. An understanding. A recontextualization. A character. Anything. It would be just enough to get my brain turning, just enough to grease the internal cogs before they’d move in such a roar I’d have to stop somewhere, somehow to furiously thumb it all into my phone.

But for all the idle ideas I gathered, nothing truly took shape in a way that felt satisfying until I sat down and got to work. Until I punched my way through a story, one word at a time. I’m pretty confident there’s a discernible difference in my body when I’ve written something – even if it’s just 100-200 words – than nothing at all. At the very least, I feel like I’m not interrupting my own momentum.

For most of my life, the tetherball gods had blessed me. I often stood taller than my opponents, be it in Colbert Elementary or alongside Lake Travis on a Bachelor Party weekend. I also had longer arms, allowing me to patiently wait for the ball to be just within the tips of my reach and just far enough out of my opponents to allow momentum to build clearly in my direction. I could be beat, yes. But it often took mistakes on my own part.

At a certain point, when tetherball seemed too childish, I got my ass handed to me. In trying to see just how quickly I could tie up the ball, its grip would escape me and it’d wind up in a furious dervish beyond my reach. In other words: I was literally thrown for a loop.