*Little Green Book of Instructions | ©* L Doctor

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This idea, along with Gerard Manley Hopkins’s idea of “inscape,” (which I will address later) is what is fueling the theme for my 2023 classes. It occurs to me that I do something like this with my pocketbook-size sketchbook …

© L Doctor Sketchbook | *I have been given a gift. I know how to build a celestial ship.*

… but this little book is a mix of moments, color studies, sketches and dreams. What happens when I make a book, on purpose, dedicated only to those guideposts that touch me or move me like “the blast of a trumpet”?

© L Doctor *Little Green Book of Instructions* 4.5” x 3.5” page size | “Etruscan” alphabet

I named my book for these phrases My Little Green Book of Instructions. These guideposts are inspiration for my hands.

I take phrases from newspapers, poems, stories, dreams or songs. Wherever I go, I carry an old-school pocket size notebook and pen, in case I want to make a note of something I see, or discover, or hear someone say. Back home I paste or write the phrases into my book.

This idea works so well with the notion that it is not only about accepting things as they are, but also imagining ourselves becoming — and shaping — what is to come.

© L Doctor Sketchbook *“Something evermore about to be.”* — Wordsworth
Just writing these words puts me in a different place, the place of poets and makers of all time… The marks on the lefthand page were made with grasses from the desert dipped in paint.

Going all the way back to cave paintings, thousands and thousands of years ago, it is the power of imagination tied to a physical act, a ritual, a making note of, that gives artists the mandate to hold vision for the culture, to help imagine what does not seem possible. In those clear moments of apprehension we know that this thing called the world, and the process called creation, is a collaborative affair. The process of creating a book like this is interactive on several levels: you and your book, you and your imagination and vision. We make and re-make what we are given.

© L Doctor Sketchbook | *Making marks with my finger and stitching*

I am here alone on retreat with a giant pile of papers that fills a two foot square box, with the task of re-arranging them for the book I am writing. I have emptied the box and now the papers cover the floor. I feel like Psyche looking at an endless pile of seeds. It seems impossible, when will I ever see the end of all this sorting and arranging? But, on the other hand, I have my own Little Green Book of quotes and thoughts that have the power to rearrange my perspective. What happens if I just close my eyes, open to a page and point? Here is what I opened to just now in my Little Green Book: Don’t cower, rise, be transparent. I don’t know where this phrase came from, but I responded by choosing to shape what is to come by not cowering in the midst of the chaos of piles of paper and the daunting task of writing a book. I think of how many times I have cowered, and rise up and choose somewhere to begin…

One way to begin Psyche’s first task, making order from chaos, is to gather these phrases that have reached you like “the blast of a trumpet”— scattered fragments of songs, verse, newspapers, poems, and prayers — and put them all in one place, in your Bible. This is deeply gratifying and turns me in the direction of making use of what I have been given, and shaping things for the future. The act of taking what is meaningful and making a place for it deepens my experience of what matters. This is the heart of the power in creating — trusting and actualizing your vision, claiming agency of your own story.

What quote do you have that moved you “like the blast of a trumpet”? I’d love to hear from you.

P. S. We have a scholarship fund, The Martin Ray Young-At-Heart Fund. For more information and to apply, click here.