How To Prepare For Autumn Zen is not a to-do list but a to-be state of mind. No instructions. No rules. Just a little autumn Haiku and sprezzatura. This image is a departure for me but its simplicity speaks volumes or not. I’ve been struggling with simplicity lately in my creative work. My mind wants empty white space, chanting less is more, less is more, less is more while my inner gypsy wants more. More jangly gold bracelets. More layers and flourishes with velvet skirts and over-stuffed ruffled edges. Writers edit for excess. Painters edit with color and form. Design of any kind is a Goldilocks balance of not too much, not too little but just right. We all know when it’s balanced because we don’t notice what’s wrong.

It appears effortless, a Sprezzatura, the art of making the difficult look easy.

We see it glossy magazines, on runways, book jacket design, a TED talk, on dinner plates and marvel at how simple, how deceptively simple well executed perfection is, when it is. We may even dare to think. I could that or it’s so simple, why didn’t I think of that? It’s not simple. The designer may have gone through hundreds of variations based on thousands of hours of experience to get it just right. We don’t see the sweat and agony of practice until blistered and bruised but only the bravura performance onstage or online.

The pared down to its essence, it’s core simplicity, of a haiku poem is Zen. In this case, nine simple words to describe an entire season. The more I look at the image, the more cluttered it feels. Okay, it’s back to the drawing board or a place of acceptance, a temporary truce.  It’s healthy to be Zen about it. There are enough tortured artists slitting their wrists over their aaaart.  Most creatives are satisfied in the short term, enough to get a piece of work out there but it’s temporary. Anyone truly creative will tweak until it’s showtime and then say they could do better, will do better even if they rocked it.

Who do you admire with spezzatura?