Not a warm-up. Not a sketch. I take a piece that's been sitting on the wall for weeks, one I'm actually fond of, and rip a strip off the edge. Then I have to work around the hole.

It's a small violence and it does something. Once the thing is damaged I stop protecting it. Half my best work came out of that. The other half is a stack of ruined paper on the floor by the radiator, and I've made peace with that too.

Today it was the one with the church window in it. Went further than I meant to. Sitting here now with the torn strip in my hand trying to decide if it gets glued back on or goes in the box with everything else I couldn't throw away.