Artwala Road

Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend S.  We started at her place some blocks north of Harvard Square and walked into the square then poked around in various shops.  We discovered that Crate and Barrel is closing up after 30 years on the same corner.  It’s not that I shop there often but it seems like the universe is disturbed when such a big shop disappears from a familiar and rather beloved landscape.  The square was so funky when I first arrived from Boston almost at the time Crate and Barrel was opening.  Then it had a Woolworth’s, 4 or 5 bookshops and the same number of funky, cheap restaurants.  Now everything is high end.  There’s only one bookstore left, a big one at least, and Starbucks, of course.

We bumped into my friend C. as well.  She was out doing a little poking around as well. The air was crisp and cold but not chilly and the square was busy but not overwrought as it is before Christmas.  It seemed like life was settling back into its usual rhythms and we could all begin to breathe in the new year with the promise that new years hold.

Then we stopped in at the one café that is independently owned for a cup of tea and a pastry.  The place was absolutely jammed, so much so that tea and pastry in hand we couldn’t find a place to perch.  S. spotted an empty stool and she also spotted a bit of space by the wall so we dragged the stool over so we could use it as a little table and set our tea cups and plates on it.  There was an older man sitting there by the wall on a stool by himself.  He must also have dragged the stool over.  He was drinking coffee and had that rumpled, red-faced, unshaven look of too much hardship and perhaps too much whiskey meant to wash the hardship away.  But he immediately stood up and told me to take his seat.

‘No, no,’ I said.  ‘Thank you so much but this is your seat.  You must sit down to drink your coffee.’

He shook his head.  ‘No.  I’m fine.  You are two friends and you must sit down so that you can have a nice time and talk.’

I protested again and he insisted again, even began to walk away.  I called out thanks and he went to stand by the opposite wall, sip his coffee and watch the world parade by in this coffee shop.  I wish I’d given him a hug.  I will have to somehow pay his kindness forward.  Doubtless the opportunity will soon present itself and I’ll remember him. Funny how goodness shows up so often in unexpected ways and forms.

S. and I had a very fine talk then we walked towards Central Square before turning towards home again.  It was a fine, fine day.  Next time I’ll remember to take my camera.  New year’s resolution to carry camera with me and learn to take better shots to share the world I live in and to capture, if possible, things that might lift us up a little.  Note to self: charge the batteries!

January 4th, 2009 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (2)

Outside the front door!

I just opened the door to discover that the white stuff is taking over!  We are home and staying put tonight as 2008 drops off the calendar and we usher in a brand new year.  It’s cozy and warm here in our house and after our travels, fine as they were, I’m very glad just to be here.  I’ve spent the morning getting myself up and running on Facebook.  Who knows why but it seems necessary if I’m to be part of 2009!

I’m so hopeful that this year we’ll make a quantum leap as a country into more kindness to all and to the planet now that we have our wondrous new president.  Not that we can lay all the necessary changes on him—we’ll all have to do our part—but at least now we’ve lifted the blanket of despair. At least now our elected officials want what we want.

Usually I write out a list of resolutions the day before the new year but I so seldom keep them. Why is that?  They’re too ambitious, I think, too stringent.  Like—go to the gym every day.  I cannot do that even if I write it down.  I find it boring.  So this time I’m going to go a bit easy and focus on the things I love.  Walk every day.  I love to walk outside.  I will walk every day to my new studio and home again in all kinds of weather, even snowy days like today.

I want to finish two projects this winter, both writing projects—my drawing book and my novel which has been rescued from a dreadful computer accident but still has to be restored in the right order and version.  This accident stopped all work on this piece last summer just when I was about to send it out.  Curious and curious.  I write just because I love it and perhaps also because for many years I was way too busy to follow this passion.  Or I didn’t believe I could.  Or I thought I must have training or money in the bank or one of a thousand other things.  Or I thought what I wrote must be perfect, not good or authentic but perfect and it’s all perfect, of course.  Every honest effort.  I know that now.  Sometimes, like when I’d lost this long labor last summer, I think—that’s it!  I’ll never do all this work again.  But then ideas come and I begin scribbling again.  So all I’m saying is that I’m just about to finish both this piece and the book I started on drawing as a way to discover the world and yourself in it.  If I hadn’t lost the novel I might not have jumped into the drawing book quite so soon.  I did it to console myself and it soon took over.  I love it and have just to do the drawings that go into it now.

I will continue to make art as I always have.  I feel like I’m an art explorer now—an aging, intrepid, female Marco Polo!  I’m looking for a brave new world.  I’m not a painter; I haven’t the patience or expertise or character for it, but I do have visual ideas and they are often rendered in paint though not always. There are drawings too and prints and things I do on the computer.  I’m thinking about all the ways images get out into the world.  I’m reading Banksy: Wall and Peace, about the great graffiti artist in London.  I will not be a graffiti artist.  I’m too much in love with the blank wall and the unadorned everything.  I’m too respectful of the property of others, not enough of an anarchist.  But I’m thinking of how to sneak the idea that we’re more than we think we are into the art salt shaker and what it can be sprinkled on.  I’m wondering how ordinary people can encounter the extraordinary and find beauty, how they can surround themselves with amazing images and inspiration, how they can lift themselves up.  I stay awake at night thinking about this. Then I sleep deeply.

I want to improve my photography skills this year.  They are really at ground zero.  I’ll have to read the camera manual.  That sort of thing is always very hard for me but I will do it.  Mostly but I want to take more photos as a way of paying closer attention to the world around me.  Sometimes I think the whole world resides in my head.  Wrong.

I’ll be eating more vegetarian food this year.  That’s easy.  I like it and it suits me.

And I’ll be wishing everyone well in whatever ways I can.  I will try to be present for all the people I know which is not always easy and even to those I bump into on the street whom I’ve never met before.  I’ll try to stay open to whatever comes my way and just flow with it.  I think I could be a Taoist now if I could be anything.  Once it would have been impossible.  Now there’s a hair’s chance.  Maybe that’s progress!

Here we are, a snowy day that forces quiet reflection upon us and chocolate cookies and tea.  But the party animal cannot be entirely restrained.  When I popped my head out the door I saw that even a walk to our local bottle shop might be perilous especially with a bottle in hand on the return home.  I said to Dear A, ‘Oh, no, it’s new year’s eve and we haven’t any champagne.’  Upon which he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle he’d hidden on the bottom shelf!  What  a man!  We will sip champagne and watch Pride and Prejudice tonight.  Again!  We love it!!

And so I wish you all, dear readers, a very happy, healthy and peaceful new year—a year full of love and light.  May we all bring our good energy into this world and make it the place we want it to be.

Happy New Year!!

December 31st, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (6)

We’re back from a week in London with Dear A’s mama, a day at home then four days in Montreal with my mama, with my husband, children, brother and sister-in-law.  Christmas.  So many intangible gifts.  Our mothers grow old.  Dear A’s is 85 and hunched over with osteoporosis; mine is 90, her blood pressure high and ankles swollen.  They’re happy to see us and discombobulated too.  We break their routine, whatever it is, and they no longer have the energy to want to do much with us.  They’re happy if we watch TV with them and cook dinner for them.  We watched a lot of TV in the last ten days.  Still, it was good.

It’s clear they won’t be with us all that much longer which is how it is and how it will be for all of us.  They’ve lived long lives and both had all kinds of extraordinary travel, agenda books filled with more parties than we’ll ever see in our lifetimes because they loved parties, closets full of fine clothes.  And now it’s over.  They sit at home, chat with a few friends, go out on errands and watch TV.

But I thank them for being there so long, for just being who they are, each in their own way.  We can’t compare lives really but one thing’s clear—they came of age in a very different time than we did.  Sometimes we had great difficulty understanding each other but when you live long enough, as they have, all that separates us falls away and we get to feel the deep connection of one person’s journey to another’s.

I’m sad to think of my own mama facing her departure which must surely come sooner rather than later at her age.  Sad, because she so vigorously embraced life and gave no thought at all to the end of it despite the fact that her own parents died young, or perhaps because of it.  The truth is death doesn’t require a lot of thought; she’s taught me that—it just arrives one day.  When the time grows near, acceptance does too.  On her part and mine.  The miracle is that all that’s good is shining forth.  The humor, which both my parents had in spades, is more brilliant than ever.  The spirit as alive as ever and doubtless will be ever more.

One day at a time.  We creep towards the new year and know—we only have this day.  Today.  So, cheers, all the best for the next one and thanks to our mothers who’ve taught us more than can ever be written in ways that can’t be counted.  The gifts of Christmas and family gatherings.  It’s all this that underpins whatever art we make, if we’re willing to give it the space it deserves.

December 29th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (4)

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas time.  May you be merry, eat well and sip well too. Soon enough we’ll be stepping into a new year so let’s see this one out with as much fun as we can muster!

Cheers and back soon.

December 24th, 2008 | Category: Dear Reader | Comments (3)