On Sunday night I watched The Little Prince on Netflix with my family. I still haven't read the book (although I know I have to now!) but I was so caught up in the story. In the movie we meet the boss of boring grownups, who takes everything inessential and makes it essential. Watching a little girl crack open the dome under which he had trapped the stars, to bring beauty and delight back into the world of adult drudgery, put a single sentence in my mind: Be the girl who set the stars free.
I'd had some useful tasks planned for the evening, but I decided instead to work on something that as C.S. Lewis said “has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” I searched the house for the art supplies that have lain mostly untouched for years, curled down on my floor and made a painting on the back of an index card. I have very little practice putting watercolors onto paper, so it doesn't look quite how I pictured it, but I don't mind. The experience of making it was important. I'm going to display it somewhere I'll see it regularly so, as I push further into adulthood and write a résumé and do more “boring adult stuff”, I'll remember to not let work become an obsession. I'll remember to not ignore beautiful things just because they aren't essential. They're still important.
I'm working on a fantasy story that's been many years in the making. It's evolved so much since the idea first occurred to me (probably more than a decade ago) that sometimes I struggle to sort through all the thoughts I have had to reach the ones I want to write down. I've found that saving pictures I find can inspire me to imagine the setting in more detail. Here are some images that help me build the story's world.
