Collecting is a form of madness. It's not a bad obsession. It's not a drug addiction. It's a good addiction. It keeps you out of trouble.
- Jo Garfield, Art and Antiques Sept 2010

 Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. 

Chuck Close

Eating Curry @ Haas Restaurant in Cape Town (Haas means rabbit)

PERHAPS THE WORLD ENDS HERE
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, 
we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the 
table so it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe 
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what 
it means to be human. We make men at it, 
we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts 
of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms 
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor 
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back 
together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella 
in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place 
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate 
the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared 
our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse. 
We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table,
while we are laughing and crying, 
eating of the last sweet bite.

from The Writers Almanac with Garrison Keillor

http://karenskitchenblog.blogspot.com/