I’m sitting here tonight in my quiet house (it’s always quiet, except when the cat is meowing and/or the dog is barking). It’s Thursday (which for me is almost as good as Friday) and a beautiful evening. Doors and windows are open and the scent of the neighbor’s gigantic lilac bush wafts through the house occasionally. I’m considering stealing out to…well, steal some blooms.
I’ve had two glasses of wine and I’ve just spent an hour in my recliner reading the latest Smithsonian magazine. I can’t tell you how I feel when I get a new Smithsonian–absolutely crammed with history, geography, cultures…a veritable feast for the mind, eye, and soul. I open a new arrival like a kid opening a birthday present and grieve when I’ve finished reading it cover-to-cover. Only 3-1/2 weeks until the next one!
I’ve got a little art project going in my “studio” (read: one corner of my bedroom). After nearly six years in watercolors I’ve switched to colored pencil and seem to have found my niche. It seems to fit my obsessive/compulsive stay-inside-the-lines personality. My latest project was a joy to do–a drawing of some wonderful fake owls I ran across in a garden shop:
In spite of the fact that work has been a nightmare for the last six months and may be for another six months, I have a good job, with good benefits. I live in a city I love. My daughter is well and happy.
These special moments in time are what we all live for, I think. Not necessarily the big things, but the times when all the little things that bless our lives push themselves forward.
I still remember keenly one evening when I was about 14. It was early yet – the sun was lowering, but hadn’t set – and it was one of the first truly warm evenings of spring. I sat outside on the front porch for nearly an hour, enjoying the warm evening and the scent of the lilacs, and the song of a robin in the neighbor’s maple tree, utterly at peace with the world. Nothing “special” happened…but that evening is etched in my memory, and all it takes is the faintest whiff of lilac or bit of birdsong to bring it back.
I think there’s something about the turning of the seasons that heightens our awareness somehow. I remember when I was a freshman in college being in a music classroom with old creaky wooden floors and an old piano in the corner. It was a late afternoon class and cold and dark outside, and the heat came on for the first time of the season, radiators hissing. Someone was playing a Baroque g minor piece on the piano. The combination of the season’s first heat, the creaky wood floors, g minor, and the sense of deep contentment that I was young and healthy and studying what I loved swelled inside me and I told myself that this was one of the best moments of my life, and I resolved to remember it always. I can stilll hear on that old piano the suspended fourth in the final cadence and its unbearably heartbreaking resolution.
Gorgeous colored pencil work, Susan! And I am so happy things are good with you and your daughter.
Lovely memory, Redwolf.
And Congratulations, I don’t think there are many other people on this board I would have thought less likely than you to smoke a cigar.
Yeah, but look at the way they (especially the one on the right,) are looking at you. It’s a little disconcerting. Oh, I like the pic, but those things have some personality for fake owls.
It really is the “little” things that are not really little at all, but, the most important. Some of us are lucky enough to figure that out along the way.
Those owls are a great study, and in colored pencil! I’ve tried to work with them, but it just never did “click”. Obviously, it clicked with you.
The owls have that twist of obviously fake and yet with personality that others have mentioned. The bodies are interesting… left-corn cob, middle - pine cone, right - bark… while the heads are more realistic - especially the eyes. … nice work!
The owls were made so differently–none of them (with the possible exception of the one in the middle) was painted/manufactured with anything even remotely resembling feathers. The one on the right, in particular, looked like he was made by someone who’d never seen an owl. His body looked like a very badly done mosaic. I just loved their eyes and how comically grouchy they looked.
I know . I was thinking that the fake owls must have come alive in the drawing because I feel they are getting ready to tell me that there are a number of things I should be doing differently. Well, they would be right of course .
It was really nice of you to let us peek into your home, Susan, and see how you were spending a very lovely peaceful evening. I hope your job improves more quickly than you expect, but I’m glad many other things seem really good.
looking at my wife and kids and wondering what I did to deserve them (admittedly, sometimes the kids make me wonder that in an entirely different way )
when everything comes together while I’m playing the flute
sitting on the patio on a summer’s morning, reading the newspaper while sipping a cup of good coffee
hiking in the hills, when I look around me and feel that in a fundamental way that yes, it IS a good world
Don’t quite reach that level while reading Smithsonian, though it is probably my favorite magazine. I certainly look forward to it each month, read it cover to cover, then hang onto the back issues for occasional re-reading.
I miss applause. Really need to get my new band kicked into gear so I can gig again.
More seriously than my previous reply, that really was a wonderful post to start this thread. Made me smile on a dull day stuck in the office while the sun was shining outside.
Lately the only thing that’s made me feel like that was sitting on a bench overlooking the countryside during my first cycle of the season. The sun had been hidden by clouds during my ride out and emerged just as I sat down to have some water and eat a nice, juicy apple. The view for miles around was lush and green, full of spring (I posted pictures of the same view last year: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=41702&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=bike+ride&start=21). The sun was heating my face nicely, 3 butterflys flew around in front of me for a few minutes and a quite attractive girl jogged past me twice with an amusingly happy labrador in tow.
It was good to realise the miserable cold and rain that was winter was starting to become a memory and reminded me of the good times I had last summer when I started excercising, lost weight and had a lot of fun in the sun with my ex-girlfriend.
I sat there eating my apple with a big grin on my face.
Then I got back on my bike, the sun went back behind it’s cloud and I was nice and cool to pelt it back home in good time to listen to the football.
. I was thinking that the fake owls must have come alive in the drawing because I feel they are getting ready to tell me that there are a number of things I should be doing differently. Well, they would be right of course 
)