You can’t always get what you want. Sometimes you can’t even get what you need.

This metaphor lends itself to oversimplification. In real life, you can have both hope and despair at the same time, to a degree, but in my experience one is usually going to be louder. The balance can shift back and forth, adding a fun element of manic depression to all the other mental noise of an imperfect creative life, but you don’t feel equal parts optimistic and pessimistic. Either you’re a superstar who produces an endless tide of flawless gems, or you’re a hack who should give up and go into medical transcription or some other field that doesn’t require imagination. Even some of the most successful people I know seem to bounce back and forth between basking in their success and questioning when it will all come crashing down around their heads when the truth regarding their lack of talent is revealed.

So it really does end up being a series of endless circles, a spiritual wheel of fortune that can rise and fall multiple times in a single day. In an hour. In a minute.

The mandala in which Dragon is tangled today is based on a sacred geometry design. Saturday The Man and I went over to the Bear’s cave for the first time in forever (he said, “That snake just gets me.) and spent a couple hours talking, about art, in theory, practice, and business, as well as the subject of these ancient forms. When you just look at them they seem orderly and easy to understand, but when you try to draw one, the intricacies of symmetry and proportion really pop out at you. I had the same experience drawing and cutting the Man in the Maze, except that one was about 500 times more complicated than this.