Where it Begins

A Sunday afternoon, so overcast it's almost froggy. A coveted table scored at a favorite cafe, one of the slightly larger ones under good, warm light {I feel somewhat guilty, but it's not like there was another table available}. God may be resting, but the people populating the tables, chair and couches at Inman Perk are not. Including me.

I've been researching and sketching on a client's project. {And I know you aren't reading this, but if you are—see, you are ranking high on the priority list}. I've been good, diligent, focused. I've made progress. But I'm hitting a wall.

It begins. I stop drawing yoga poses and Js and Ys and start drawing a procession of ideas for Valentine's Day cards I can't possibly finish in time for this year {It took forever for the ideas to flow, and now they wake me at 3 am like a drippy faucet}. And along with the heart mazes and avian queens and tic-tac-toe boards of crossed arrows comes the impulse to put on paper another idea I've been batting around in my head: Eve's Cup.

Confession: It's not really the beginning, exactly. Of course not. I mean, you don't really think The Amighty didn't ruminate awhile before beginning THE CREATION. Who knows, perhaps he even {gasp, heresy} tinkered around a bit and experimented before putting omnipotent paw to dust.

So the REAL beginning was several years ago when I drew the Devil's Cup, Cinderella's Cup and Marie Antoinette's Cup. And then the next beginning was when I dug through my archives and found the sketches and thought "You know, I really like these . . . ." and then decided to post them here on this blog, and then decided that they would make fabulously desirable notecards. But there were only three of them. And three's an odd number. It makes me uncomfortable. So I had to make more. Anne Bonny's Cup is already done, at the printer and awaiting birth in the flesh along with Satan's, Cinderella's and pauvre Marie's. And this here is the beginning of Eve's Cup.