Tiger Woods said something that I found
interesting: "In golf, mental practice is crucial because the
ball sits still on every shot.?Unlike, for example, hockey,
tennis or basketball, golf is a game of creation, not reaction.
Negative thoughts and anxiety can easily intrude when an athlete
has to initiate a motion."?

I was thinking that the same goes for that eerie stillness that
sometimes surrounds my easel.?So many times I've asked myself
how relatively good work happens one time--and not the next.?So
many times I've had to look into the particulars of my mental
practice.?Today, for some reason, I seemed to be knocking the
ball onto the green and close to the pin.?Today seemed better
than a lot of other days.?I'm going to analyze what was going
on today and we'll try to find out why:

Concentration:?The capability of focus.
Visualization:?The sight of the unseen.
Curiosity:?The need to be intrigued.
Desire:?The wish to do well.
Drive:?The pressure of eagerness.
Patience:?The place of no hurry.
Worthiness:?The finding of significance.
Settlement:?The joy of some inner peace.
Comfort:?The envelopment of music and warmth.
Instinct:?The feeling of just letting it flow.
Appreciation:?The hearing of gentle applause.

Having said all that, I have to tell you that last night a snow
blizzard gave us a power outage.?By 3 a.m. our home was pretty
cold.?Even Dorothy noticed--she stuck her nose under the
bedclothes and spoke to us about it.?By candlelight and
flashlight I brought in wood and lit two fireplaces.?I fired up
some coffee on a paraffin burner.?Tending the home fires, there
was no more sleep, so I couldn't put "well rested" in the list
above.?When the power came back on about 8 a.m., I went
bleary-eyed into the studio and thought about beginning.?I had
that nauseating feeling that today I was going to be a duffer.
But something happened.?In my mental tiredness, I was getting a
message that I call "the extra chance syndrome."?Today might be
a special day because it was already rotten and it didn't
matter.?And because it didn't matter, it did.?As Tiger says,
"It's only a game."
PS: "The mind stands in the way of the eye." (Arthur Stern)

Esoterica: In the golf analogy, the mental practice that goes on
between finding the ball and striking the ball is the most
crucial.It's looking at and thinking about your next moves on
a work-in-progress that means the most and can get you into the
most trouble.?Art requires both thinking and not thinking.?Art
requires visualizing without micro-managing your visualization.
And in the end when you select your brush or other tool, you put
your trust in something else that is still unknown and perhaps
unknowable.