A Weekend's Account

Mornings:



glorious sun with a bitter chill on the air; a golden dawn, bronze light falling through sheer curtains
*
persimmons and the "best damn grapefruit you've ever tasted" (as the market vendor told me)
*
breakfast out, oatmeal with the works, stroll around the plaza
*
pine siskins.  clearing seed fast, sometimes ten to a feeder sock, a whirling, whistling, chattery group of yellow streaked wings and grippy little toes.
*
letter writing on graph paper, black ink smeared on a left hand
*

Afternoons:

reading her book of poetry (it's so good I could burst with pride)
*
plantish retail therapy.  the woman who runs the nursery again commenting on my "massive growing collection" of house plants - "why here you are again!  a new plant every time!"  i refuse to be shamed
*
too much tea
*
painting, painting, and painting even more.  pushing water, finding deer, daydreaming, mountain hunting, budding twigs, swirling rainbows
*
blue apatite genuine paint on a "good" shirt.  blerg
*

Evenings:


"back-rub in a cup" - scratch brewed vegan chai
*
rasping sound of files on metal and the hot whirl of a polishing wheel.  prehnite, chrysoprase, larimar, color splashed along the bench
*
a kitchen well scrubbed down
*
scent of roasting squash
*
buckwheat heating pillows in bed, new fiction, mint tea, slumbering cats
*

my friends,
i hope the weekend was all that you needed with snow flurries on top!

On Pigtails and Histories

Ten Thousand Small Histories No. 4
(because I can't stop)
The other day I was rooting around in one of my studio drawers, looking for something that still remains forgotten when I came upon these two coloricious bits of beach pottery.  When I took my first smithing class last winter I took along these two.  And I mean really.  Truly.  How could you go wrong with teal the color of Florida's gulf and chartreuse as bright as any budding fern?  They are a dynamic duo I tell you.  I dropped everything and went to work.  A songbird feather pressed into sterling, rusticated bits and rings reminiscent of pocket treasures... le sigh.  It feels lighthearted and ancient all wrapped up in one.

And while we're on the subject of lightheartedness, can I tell you about a physiological marker I reached this weekend?
Pig tails.
Really they're more like two tiny puff balls of curls and a mass of bobby pins BUT for the first time since the hair was lost, I've been able to put it up.  And somehow, with hair piled back on top of my head, I feel more like me.
Grow, grow you silly little proteins!

Sketchbook Writings

~ From My Sketchbook Writings, Tuesday January 10th ~

It begins like this:
An uneventful sunset eases into busy hands and a quiet mind.  It progresses like any dream of flying; walking turns to running turns to leaping turns to earth rotating slowly below one's soles.  And somewhere in there, the mind gives way to wild thoughts.  The dangerous thoughts that in one's waking moments are too big, too grandiose, too ludicrous to allow among the elderly at heart.  The children, well, they've always been unafraid.  So we tie wings to their shoes and tell them to fly and sure enough,
they step onto thin air.
All the while our hands keep moving while the mind leans back and sighs and says yes.  That will do.

* * *

The Natives

 

The Natives: the California Quail and the Dark-Eyed Junco
6" x 6"
Watercolor on Arches Cotton Rag

It's the wildest thing:
We meet eyes.  They give me a wink.  And I know we are made of the same stuff: stardust, fern spores, redwood decay, salt air, limestone, blue sunrises and golden sunsets with a tiny pinch of silt from the crush of tectonic plates.
Natives.
* * *

(A new mini series of watercolors)
(in the shop now...)

Personal Day

Good Morning!
Happy New Year!
How is your heart today?

(Get a load of that fruit bowl, right?  Pears, pomegranates, pinenuts, hemp seeds and raw cacoa nibs!  Delish!  I've just embarked on a strict elimination diet to identify a food sensitivity that has gone on for WAY too long, but LOOK at what I get to eat!)
I love everything that a new year symbolizes: the passage of time, a fresh opportunity to claim your destiny, a time to reevaluate goals and set them anew.  The last few days BC and I have walked miles with the pups, mulling over exactly what we want and exactly how we want to get there.  We've drafted lists and plans and I had the perfect excuse to order a gorgeous daily agenda from a lovely bookmaker.  It feels so hopeful!
The last few days we've been so hard at work that I've decided to take a "personal morning."  Way back in another life, when BC and I both were sprinting the fast track, working double jobs, I discovered that personal days were the key to my sanity.  They often fell under the ruse of food poisoning, but really you would find me strolling the streets of Santa Cruz eating a carmel apple with a sack of new-used books slung over shoulder.  I would buy two, count 'em, TWO lattés and read fiction in a tiny rustic cafe.  They are some of my very favorite memories of that period of life and while the 70 hour workweek has passed, the personal day lives on.

So.
That's how I'm being kind to myself today.  And I'm bringing a sturdy cotton bag for my [hopeful] book cache.
What are you doing for you this week?  This year?  I'd love to know!
~ Umber ~