Experience.

The dirt resists you.  It is very hard to make the earth your own.  I've done much less to try to make it mine.  All my association with it is a kind of freedom.  Yet it's hard to live at the ranch.  When I first came here I had to go 70 miles on a dirt road for supplies.  Nobody would go by in two weeks.  I thought the ranch would be good for me because nothing can grow here and I wouldn't be able to use up my time gardening.  But I got tired of canned vegetables so now I grow everything I need for the year at Abiquiu.  I like to get up when the dawn comes.  The dogs start talking to me and I like to make a fire and maybe some tea and then sit in bed and watch the sun come up.  The morning is the best time, there are no people around.  My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.

I have no yen to go anywhere. But I go around the world anyway to see what's there -- and to see if I'm in the right place.  Flying to Japan, the first thing I saw was a field of snow that you could walk on, then a sky paved with clouds ... wherever I go, I have an eye out for rocks.  Outside my hotel in Phnom Penh I picked up a stone and carried it back around the world in my purse.  Stones, bones, clouds -- experience gives me shapes -- but sometimes the shapes I paint end up having no resemblance to the actual experience.

Georgia O'Keeffe