A bee came to me today. Not in a dream, not in some grand mystical vision, but in ink and paint, sketched out onto matte board like a half-formed thought. Its wings trembled in the still air. The flowers opened their mouths. It was a silent exchange, a cosmic deal older than words.
Nectar in, honey out. A quiet alchemy.
This is the way of things. The taking, the giving, the becoming. The world is built on transformation. The old wise ones talk about course corrections on a soul level, the mending, the rearranging of broken light. The bee does not question. It does not hoard. It collects what is given, refines it, offers it back as something golden. It never stays too long. It never asks if the flower loves it.
I think about this as I work, as ink leaves my pen and paint dries. What am I gathering? What am I giving back? Art is a kind of alchemy too. You pull something raw from the world—an old man’s face, a crooked house, a strange thought you can’t shake. You break it down, let it ferment inside you, and return it in a form no one has seen before. Maybe it sticks. Maybe it doesn’t. The bee doesn’t wonder who will taste the honey. It just makes it.
Somewhere in all this, there’s a lesson. Not the kind in books. The kind that lives in your bones. The knowing that the work is enough, that the process itself is just that–a process. That the hands painting, gathering will one day become the earth that feeds the flowers.