Inspiration

My good friend Paula is, among many wonderful things, a creativity coach, and as such is interested in what inspires people. She asked me a question the other day that got me thinking. What do I gather around me, besides raw material, that gives rise to that first idea? Lotsa stuff, apparently. Some treasured since childhood.

Rocks, shells, beetle wings, a tiny origami turtle atop a set of plaster teeth, pictures cut from magazines, feathers, arrowheads, petrified wood, mysterious vertebrae, a Oaxacan rabbit...

...and a lot of books.

Wait. Are those Usagi Yojimbo comics, you ask?
Why yes. How clever of you to notice.