By high school, my friends and I would pile in some boy’s van on the weekends for concerts at the Spectrum or the more intimate Tower Theatre in Philadelphia where I grew up, regularly waiting in line for hours to get front row seats and lose part of our hearing. These were the days of Bic lighters glowing in a weed-infused haze, asking for Just. One. More. Please!

Having a Sunday walk in the park or woods surrounding my house seemed more appropriate to celebrate this special day. No dress or patent leather shoes required.

The structure in our lives helps to ground us in between flights of what sometimes feel like out-of-body-experiences with beauty. In the creative process, structure is often consistent, while beauty ripples and flows — sometimes unbidden — merging the perfect pair.

In between breakthroughs of semi-brilliance in the studio, artists move between doubt and fear most of their lives. Like a drug, making art can take us on a magic carpet ride one minute and thrown overboard, gripping the fringes the next.

I began way too teenage-young stealing my sister’s Parliaments at fourteen and making myself power through coughs in the locked bathroom until I could smoothly get through a cigarette with the “cool” I was after. By the time I reached young adulthood, everyone I knew smoked.

In the town where I live in Mexico, most of the stores are about the size of a walk-in closet. La tiendita de la esquina (also known as the corner store) and la papelería (a “stationary” but oh-so-much-more store) are the heart and soul of a Mexican neighborhood. In my neighborhood alone, I count eight tienditas within a three block radius. Each one has it’s own flavor.