Artwala Road

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 | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL