This is one of three new images in my Dualities gallery. CLICK HERE to see them.

My friend Dorothy and I were having one of our wonderful phone visits on Friday afternoon. Dorothy is a poet whom I would describe as a mystic. She and I have been discussing the creative process since we first met at a poetry reading in San Francisco in November 1998. She is intrigued by my Dualities project so that was one of the subjects we discussed on Friday. I was trying to describe how the process has unfolded since I began this series a week ago. My description went like this:

It's like my intuition rushes ahead leaving my mind behind in the dust. My mind sits there forlorn until my intuition looks back and feels sorry for it. Instead of leaving it sitting alone in the dust, my intuition crawls back on all fours, grasps my mind by the scruff of its scrawny neck, throws it up on its back, and carries it forward at a slow enough pace so my mind doesn't fall off. This is a laborious process but one that ensures the act of creation does not go flying off like a kite with no string. The mind, limited as it is in comparison with intuition, is an essential partner in the act of creation. It is what tries to make sense of things. For photographers who deal with technical considerations, the mind must be fully engaged in the creative process. The key is not to give it too much power for if one does, the intuition can get quite huffy and refuse to play at all. If that happens, the product may be lovely but it will be predictable. Better to slow down so the mind can keep up with the intuition. Then it is possible that true originality will emerge. And isn't that what we hope? That our work will be utterly unique? May it be so.