I have the song “Noah’s Ark” by CocoRosie on repeat right now. For some reason the juxtaposition between the nice backbeat and the sweet voice overtop is just what I need right now. I’ve been traveling so much this month that it’s nice to hear a song mixed with sadness and beauty and silliness.

But then again, I have always adored juxtaposition. Not just for the way the word rolls off my tongue, but for its denotation, too. I like the way busy city streets pair up the most unlikely combinations, culminating in a cacophony that is at once both mundane and symbolic. I also like how nature reminds us in this modern world that even when we think we’re alone someone has stepped here before.

Most of the work I have done over the past two years has nodded to that effect, that the future belongs to juxtaposition- in a nook where in making comparisons between two seemingly unlike things you arrive at a new way of understanding and/or a new way of being. It pops up again and again in my research, my writing and my art/craft production, this notion that everything is made of something else- you just have to know where to look.

The times where this becomes most apparent are the days when I’m rushing around doing loads of different tasks- making coffee, fighting traffic, reading some Roland Barthes followed by n + 1 followed by the local paper, selling books, editing articles, cooking, learning basic design, knitting, catching snippets of bad television. As my brain skips from one task to another, ideas form and bubble to the top as I flit from one activity to the other. Less restless and more curious.

The past two days I have been sick and therefore bed-ridden. While I may have caught up on sleep, it has done little for my overall productivity. I need to think in between actions, not think as an action all on its own. It is between the cracks where I honestly think that creation and invention lie, somewhere between waiting in line for coffee and rummaging through your desk for that perfect pen your mind connects disparate ideas.

If writing about craft and activism has taught me anything, it’s that there is always something to connect- you just have to realize that the first step is putting two seemingly unlike things side-by-side and stepping back. In blurring the edges, most often you will find a wealth of similarities and whole new modes of thought that you never thought possible.

In making pieces sometimes labeled art and sometimes labeled craft, I have learned that trusting convention is only okay if you see it as part of a continuum. And that the richness of the experience is not always drawn from the finished project, but from the moment the idea ignited and made itself known.

The trick is finishing the thought that was sparked to completion, which is something I am currently struggling with as I surround myself with half-finished essays and projects and pieces- all which look more like chaos than works in motion. But just like the way thoughts in my head meet up together, so will the projects find their way to done. It’s just a matter of stepping back and letting them co-exist side-by-side for a bit and trusting in the process as well as the continuum that allows me to create.