What becomes of the artist when creation is infinite? A reflection on taste, beauty, attention, and the increasingly essential art of discernment in a world overflowing with things to consume.

Motherhood has not made my creative life smaller. It has changed the scale at which I practice attention—and taught me that some of the most meaningful art may exist only for the moment we are inside it.

The world does not become less extraordinary as we grow older. We simply become more familiar with it. What if wonder is not a personality trait, but a practice—the art of learning to see what has been here all along?

I thought I had written a book about pain. Looking at it now, I see something different: pain is where some of the poems begin. The destination is aliveness.

Photography taught me to notice what is happening outside of me. Poetry taught me to notice what is happening within. Both have become ways of practicing the same thing: paying attention.

After building a life and photography career in Portland, Oregon, I moved to Central Oregon and found myself beginning again—this time as a poet, photographer, wife, mother, and artist learning what it means to put down roots.