It’s already midmorning, still chilly. I’m warming up in the car between hiking and exploring trails, picnic tables, views and moments, and the planned purpose of this adventure; to paint. The honest underlying purpose has already been well met for this day; I have walked new trails, seen new views and new places, and experienced entirely new moments. My mind and my spirit feel refreshed and alive – so alive! It’s lovely. This is a beautiful place, and so early in the Spring (and the day) it is uncrowded.
A beautiful place for thinking and painting.
… There is a popular disc golf course adjacent to the picnic table I finally settled on, but it’s quite a chilly day, so only the most fanatic players are venturing onto the course this morning, and they are few, and no bother…
The sky is a soft featureless gray, at least for now. The river below the steep edge of the bank flows steadily past. It looks fast, deep, and cold. The geese bobbing along near the far shore don’t seem to mind at all. They call loudly to each other. Overhead a bird of prey surfs the air currents, circling a tall tree with a large nest near the top. I wonder if it’s theirs? Are there baby birds in the nest? I sit quietly, watching, listening, enjoying the moment grateful for the military experience of a lifetime ago that prompted me to bring spare socks. Cold wet feet are miserable. My feet are warm and dry, in spite of the muddy trails and occasional puddles.
One point of view.
There’s no reason to rush. I sit, warm, and filled with contentment and joy (and coffee). It’s a nice moment. I savor it. I am hoping the sun will break through for a little while, shortly. Regardless, I’ve found a nice spot for some painting and a chance to begin again.
I’m sipping my coffee thinking about a strange dream from which I woke this morning, groggy and unprepared for a new day. (I really don’t like the change to DST at all; I’ll be groggy in the morning for days to come.) In this dream, I’d somehow made my way into the basement of a large modern museum, and from wainscot to rafters that space was hung with my art – but only that difficult-to-access basement space. lol Large work, small work, framed, unframed – crammed along the walls, a chaos of color, mostly unsigned. I recognized all of it – even the pieces I haven’t yet painted – and I could examine each one clearly, and recall when (and why) it was painted. I walked through the space, eyes wide with wonder to see it all – so much! There were other things to this dream, a shared living space elsewhere, other artists (with whom I am not yet acquainted), friends (some of whom had slyly snatched a favorite piece from the walls of that place to take along for their own personal joy). What had my attention was the art – so much of it! The pieces I hadn’t yet painted drew my attention most often, and most clearly. I examined them closely, hoping to understand the journey ahead of me more clearly… “When will I paint that?” I wondered as I walked.
Waking up was a bit disappointing; I wasn’t finished looking yet, and had just gotten into a deep discussion with an old friend about a particular piece he was making his own. I wanted to tell him all I knew about it, but he stopped me. “I want to keep the mystery of it,” he said smiling, “I want to love the work in spite of anything to do with the artist”. When I woke, the thought that lingered was “how much of an artist’s signature is simply ego, nothing at all to do with the work? What might the signature take away from the work?” A lot of my work happens to be unsigned, not for any lack of intention to sign it but only because it’s generally the thing I do last – after the piece is entirely finished, the paint dried, and the work ready to sell or to hang, and because I’ve more or less lost interest in continuing to work on it at that point… I forget to sign it, until it’s necessary because the piece has sold. lol Now I’m wondering if there may be value in not ever signing some pieces, at all, and leaving that mystery intact? I sign quietly to myself, and a bit cynically; if I took that approach, sooner or later someone else would likely claim some particularly good or interesting piece as their work… and my ego rebels. There’s something here to think about… maybe later.
I sip my coffee quietly. This morning it feels… medicinal. I’m so damned groggy. Head still foggy from my dreams, feeling not quite awake, yet, though it’s been nearly two hours since I woke. Everything seems to take longer, and feels somehow less “fluid”, less routine, and taking more than usual concentration and effort. Putting words together feels a bit cumbersome and awkward. My morning oatmeal is an exercise in will; it is 100% quite disgusting this morning, and I wonder why I bother. Nothing “sounds good”, and I am noise-sensitive, and a bit cranky – I’d rather be painting. lol I have in mind a particular piece I saw in my dream… my fingers itch to put it to canvas or paper, to see it come alive in front of my eyes. (Was I actually using the heads of thumb-tacks in that composition – or were those sequins? Where did I get so much gold dust??) I chuckle softly; now is not that time. Even as the thought crosses my mind, I recognize that trying to create that piece today would only be a dim copy; it is not of this moment. I don’t work in that style or with those materials, these days. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and let the dream fade away as I sip my coffee. This coffee is so good this morning, and I am grateful to have it.
I look at my reflection in the window, a mirror in the predawn darkness. I look tired. (I feel tired.) I watch myself stretch, and gently rub the frown lines from my forehead. This too will pass, I remind myself. It’s already time to begin again, anyway…
I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about the future. I wonder what it holds? I mean, besides uncertainty… It’s not yet written. I’m making it right now (so are you) with every choice, every action, and my participation in any circumstance in which I may be involved (and perhaps some in which I am not directly involved at all). The future is… complicated. We can’t see what is on the path ahead, but we keep right on walking toward the next bend. We have to; the journey is the the destination. Even standing still (metaphorically) doesn’t halt our forward progress through time. The clock is always ticking.
I’m 97 days away from my next birthday. There were years in my life when I could not imagine being in this place, or having come this far. I couldn’t even begin to plan for a future I felt fairly certain (at some points) that I would not live to see. I did a pretty shitty job of being prepared for this place in life… older. Aging. Feeling my capabilities descreasing as my wisdom and joy in life increase. Wanting to retire but needing to continue working. “Complicated” doesn’t begin to explain it in any simply way, it merely obscures the nuances of the truth. I’m not even complaining – I’m just thinking about it and feeling rather mortal. My time is finite. I wonder how much I have left? Would I choose to “live forever” if I could? I think I might, actually, yeah – even as unprepared for that as I am. I rather enjoy living this life, and seeing each sunrise. I’m definitely not bored with it, and there is so much more to learn and do and see and experience.
I’m not feeling discontented this morning. I’m not even in much pain – quite manageable, and I’m grateful for that. I got a good night’s rest, after a rather trying day yesterday, and I’m feeling fairly relaxed and on the edge of feeling actually… merry. Joyful. Grateful. Almost… happy. But I still wonder how many grains of sand remain in the hourglass… and what lies beyond?
There are things to do – I have a list – and I’m looking forward to most of them. The weather has been tempting me out into the garden, and it’s a lovely way to occupy my time productively, and happily. I smile when I think about my childhood resentment of having to spend time on my hands and knees weeding the garden, or preparing the soil, or moving things from here to there to help out in a garden I had no particular fondness for. I think I was only about 19 when my perspective on that changed. Certainly by the time I was 22, I was eager to create and nurture a garden of my own. I remember my very first roses fondly (Mr Lincoln, and Olympiad, which were part of the landscape of a little house in Texas I’d moved into). They changed my mind about roses, and I’ve grown roses ever since. Isn’t it strange how our perspective can change over time? How what matters most evolves over a lifetime of experience?
Roses on a sunny day. Impermanent. Like moments.
Beyond the garden, my to-do list is all practical things, part of taking care of hearth and home. I’m yearning to paint, but there are things that come first as priorities. I’m hoping perhaps to make a trip to the coast over the vernal equinox, to relax for a few days and paint, and get some solo time…but… there are costs to consider, and I’d very much like to avoid “Spring break” crowds (just not my thing, too much noise and chaos). I frown at my calendar… when is Spring break, anyway? I feel almost relieved to see that Spring break is the week following the equinox…but… can I make it work? I sigh to myself. I can remember being less “responsible”, but while that seemed to be “more fun” in some ways, it was a rocky path and one that I don’t care to walk these days. I’d rather plan with care, and choose wisely, and work within the limitations of my resources in a practical way. Less stress. Weather permitting, I’m pretty comfortably equipped for plein air painting, and there are some lovely spots for it locally. I could just take the time, stay fairly close to home, and make day trips to see things from a new perspective, paint awhile, and return home. I sit with that thought and sip my coffee as the sun rises. It starts to sound like a real adventure of a sort I rarely indulge. My mind wanders the map in my head of places I could go, handy picnic tables with pleasing views… will the weather cooperate?
I sit awhile longer with my thoughts. Soon enough it will be time to begin again.
I have a lot of pictures. Too many. Some of them are no longer meaningful. Some of them are reminders of times and people perhaps best forgotten or allowed to fade into the seldom recalled past. It’s strange that most of these pictures only reach back into the relatively recent past, around 2004 or so, and most are since 2010, when I got my first smartphone. Technology allowed me to accumulate clutter in the form of images. My hard drives and cloud storage are further cluttered by copies of backups, trying to preserve something meaningful of a life lived. I spent a lot of years struggling to account for the risk my poor memory represents, and admittedly overreacted quite commonly by saving yet another backup of something I’d forgotten I’d already backed up.
…More than 50k unique images, in 2800+ folders, across multiple drives, a cloud storage service, and a NAS on our home network, amounting to about 2TB of stored images, and a few gigs of written work, and I’d lose it all if humanity lost the power grid upon which we are so reliant….
Like a paved trail on a sunny day, some of this may seem obvious; it doesn’t hurt to check the map once in awhile, anyway.
… What is it all good for? What will become of it when I am gone? Will any of it matter at all? Who even gives a fuck about a random photograph from a walk along a trail on a sunny summer day, or yet another picture of a rose?
Roses on a sunny day. Impermanent. Like moments.
The pictures are not the experience (or even the memory). The map is not the world. Moments are unavoidably fleeting, and each is unique like a step on a trail, or a rose. Trying to capture them all in pictures so that I “don’t lose my memories” is (rather sadly) a wasted effort. I catch myself surprised again and again when I look over old pictures. Where was that? Who is that in this picture? Where did I live then? What was I doing at that time? Oh! I remember that – I’d forgotten all about that. The details are lost, in spite of having the picture. The pictures, then, would likely benefit from somewhat stricter curation, perhaps? I have too many pictures of some given moment, and too many that I’ve kept in spite of being poorly shot, out of focus or composed badly. In some cases, the backups of backups are (hilariously) nested within each other, pointlessly taking up digital space. Very few exist in any printed format at all. Once I’m gone, more than likely, someone at some point will simply “hit delete”, and it will all be gone.
I thought about this a lot over the weekend. I spent time cleaning up my archive of art images specifically, and while I was at it, I deleted several redundant backups (after checking carefully that they were truly copies of the one valued, useful backup). I looked at pictures of moments I’d forgotten, and enjoyed the refreshed recollection. I found moments for which I’d taken far too many nearly identical pictures, and kept the one I liked the best and deleted the rest. I found pictures of times long past I’d just as soon forget about, and deleted those without concern or trauma. I found entire folders of pictures that weren’t actually my own; I’d held on to them for some other person no longer part of my life, and happily deleted those too. No rumination, tears, or heartache, it was simply time to let a bunch of this garbage go. Digital hoarding is just as objectionable and problematic as any other sort; evidence of chaos and damage. I let a lot of stuff go, and it felt good.
The strangest ones were moments captured that lacked any sort of context at all. Why had I taken that picture of that moment? It wasn’t always clear what the point was, or what was going on. A picture of a lovely flower is reliably a beautiful thing of its own, and needs no explanation, but… a picture of a thing, place, or person that isn’t well-composed or interesting or beautiful on its own? What then? What was that about? What have I forgotten – and does it even matter now?
What was I hoping to remember?
Creating order from chaos is nearly always time well-spent. It provided helpful perspective to be reminded that there will always be things forgotten, and that not everything is worth preserving. Moments are fleeting – and it is a common characteristic of a moment. Fighting it doesn’t change that. Living the moment creates the memory. Being present is what matters, I think. I smile over my coffee, remembering the peculiar feeling of satisfaction and sanity that came of tidying up my digital archives. There’s more work to do there; there are so many pictures. I take fewer, these days, and I think about that too. I’m more likely to select a well-considered few on a particular theme, and create a wee photo book for someone (or for myself) to keep or share the memories that matter most, and provide them with some amount of context along the way. One day, perhaps when I’m quite old, those photo books will be a lasting thing I can hold in my hands and enjoy, and the digital images may be long gone and forgotten. There’s something to learn from that.
As the calendar turned toward 2023, I took a moment to let my paper journals of many years go. It was a process of “putting down baggage” and letting go of past moments and trauma, and beginning again. It was a way of reducing the clutter in my life and in my mind. It was about giving up a body of written work that had become “content without context”. As with the photographs, those journals had lived beyond their value to me. It was a strange moment to reach, and I’ve rarely regretted the choice at all. This process of sorting through old images and doing some digital “tidying up” feels quite similar, with fewer tears being shed, and less hesitation or uncertainty.
We become what we practice. If we practice clinging to images and words (or objects) without context or value, we become… hoarders. That’s not healthy. Isn’t sufficiency enough? Creating order from chaos, and keeping only what is useful and what matters most seems a much healthier practice. I sip my coffee and think my thoughts. Useful perspective.
Valentine’s Day. Pretty serious “Hallmark holiday”, I know. It’s also, paradoxically, a wonderful thing to see a celebration of carnal and romantic love on a holiday calendar mostly controlled by fairly repressed, repressive, puritannical minds. It’s about the love, not the candy, not the cards, not the children in classrooms exchanging tokens and favors years before they have any capacity for romantic love (and isn’t that just a little weird?). I’ve said it before – all of it. Worth repeating, but maybe not for re-writing. lol
So much love it regularly spills onto canvas. 🙂
It is about the love.
I slept in. Snowy morning, no work, cozy quiet home – it’s lovely. My Traveling Partner woke about the same time I did. I made breakfast and coffee, we enjoyed the moment together. He gave me a little something for the holiday, I added something to the shop that he wanted very much. It isn’t about that, though, it’s about the love. It’s not about the breakfast together. It’s not about the gifts (we often don’t give each other anything at all). The love stands on its own, enduring and sweet and deep and passionate and warm and nurturing.
Love, smiles, coffee – a pleasant start to the day doesn’t have to be fancy.
How do I know it’s love? How does anyone know? I’ve been wrong before – most of us are wrong about love eventually. It’s easy to mistake lust for love. To mistake fondness for love. To confuse codependence with love. To confuse habit with love. Funny (strange) how easily we’re wrong about love, when it is so incredibly important to creating a life to thrive in. So… how do I know this is love? Because I’ve got options, and I’m comfortable with that knowledge – and I’m here because here is where I most want to be. Same is true for my Traveling Partner, and I feel comfortably confident in that, too. We’re here because here is what we choose, because we want to be here. Together on this journey. Love. Neither of us “has to be here”. Neither of us is trapped in this relationship or this life – we could walk on if we chose to. Options. It’s not tragic. It’s not a threat. It’s just real. We choose each other out of love. It’s not always perfect or perfectly easy. We’re individual human beings with our own perspective, our own experiences behind us, our own thoughts on life, love, and the world. Sometimes we disagree. Sometimes we hurt too much to be kind or patient. We still go right on loving each other.
Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?
I have a love for this particular human being that has exceeded my understanding of what love could be. I enjoy that, and I work to live up to what love requires. My Traveling Partner is my best friend, and my muse. My enduring source of encouragement, and perspective that isn’t my own. He brings balance and fun to a life that might otherwise lack it (have you met me?). I often think about “how we got here” – more than I think about “where we’re going”. I am surprised that our paths crossed more than once in our busy lives, and that we are so connected now. Love endures. I’m glad that it does. I’m grateful.
Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.
I’m glad I didn’t let myself stay trapped in relationships that weren’t built on love. The best gift I’ve ever given myself has been freedom from bad relationships – the choices to walk on. Sometimes I’ve been too slow to make those choices, holding on to hope for too long, but I did get there. Love is worth working towards, and worth choosing. No substitute is adequate – better to have nothing than to endure less than real love (my opinion).
Love matters most.
I smile to myself and finish my coffee. I grin when I see the plush “mochi cat” pillow-toy my beloved gave to me – reminds me how much I am loved. I don’t know what the future may hold, but I hope that it holds a lot more of this. The love. However long love endures, I am grateful to have had it. There’s nothing else that feels like this.
Evening Light 