Lisa Snellings

Years ago, in a different life, and several complete cell generations ago, I had a collection of poems by Richard Brautigan entitled "The Pill Versus the Spring Hill Mining Disaster". I read it aloud, several times over, to my mother in her last weeks. I will always be glad I did.
I remember many details about the experiences---the smell of flowers, the wind blowing the curtains, the sound of her laughter. I remember very little about the poems, except that they were raw and funny and kicked us right where it hurts.
The collection's title came from one poem that likened unfertilized eggs to miners trapped under the earth.

It's stayed with me for all this time and tends to come to mind when I think of unrealized ideas. All those good ones that slip by because there aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week or dollars in the budget to bring them to fruition. I think I've said before that I believe that the sculpture I make on Tuesday morning won't be the same as the one I make on Saturday night, even if it's an idea I came up with the previous Sunday. I've learned that usually, if I don't do the work while the idea is fresh, I'm better off letting it go.
I try not to think of them as buried. I can see them better as snowflakes--each unique, each beautiful. You can capture one, but most blow past in the blink of an eye. Maybe someone else will catch those. Maybe they're gone forever. Thing is, once we think them, they are part of us.
But then, in the words of Batman "...It is not who you are inside, but what you do that defines who you are."

No matter what you've felt, or thought, or seen in your deepest visions, no matter if these things tore you apart and put you back together differently, no one will ever see the work you didn't do.