Sweeping the Garden

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

I spent this past weekend re-staging Utopian Hotline with Theater Mitu—a piece we created five years ago in the middle of a pandemic that has continued to live beyond our imagination.

We’ve toured it to Bahrain, Utah, Texas, and now it premieres in the Boston Museum of Science as a new version built specifically for planetariums.

Making art, to me, is a lifelong investigation into purpose. Or as I often tell my students: it's an investigation into making something that matters to you. To make something beautiful in response to the chaos.

It reminds me of a Zen phrase I often reflect on:
You sit and you sweep the garden.
This is how one tends to this beautiful world.

And so we keep sweeping. Again and again.
Because the world keeps needing it.

Where are you sweeping the garden, and what are you sweeping for?

A POEM

“Tender” by Sophie Klahr

I spend late morning weeping with the news:

a black bear with burnt paws is euthanized

along the latest wildfire’s newest edge.

It was crawling on its forearms, seeking

a place to rest. I Google more; reports

leak out: the bear had bedded down behind

a house, below a pine, to lick its paws.

In hours before its end, officials named

it Tenderfoot, though some reports report

just Tender. Later, I will teach a class

where we’ll discuss the lengths of lines in poems.

I’ll say a sonnet is a little song

to hold a thing that otherwise cannot

be held: a lonely thing; a death; a bear.

Grateful,

Michael