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Welcome, changing seasons. Welcome, cold days and gloomy wet weather. I welcome you for the skies brushed in feather gray, for the last rays of light streaking orange through dying leaves, for the vivid colors of the harvest and the blankness of fog.
I greet you with a smile despite impending snow, cabin fever, and months on end of never being warm, because you bring droplets of water clinging to vine and berry, the haunting beauty of decay, afternoons scented with pumpkin and apple, morning air so crisp and sharp I can almost touch it.
You are the harsh, untamed wasteland of the Pack River as its waters recede, the eagles nesting in Wolf Lodge Bay, the anticipatory taste of snow biting my lips.
For this I will love you as winter closes in, far from the warm green place that gave birth to me. All this, and your cold mirrors of sky.
My first-ever successful image transfer with gel medium. These days I am learning so much about art, about myself, about life. There is something indescribably wonderful about this process, taking something you aren’t satisfied with and trying new things with it, undoing some and keeping others, leaving it and coming back to it until it feels right. This is growth at a calm, steady pace, a gentle unfolding. Even the occasional frustration can’t mar the joy of it all. “Open me and find me” is a phrase that’s been bumping around in my head since my senior year of high school. I’ve used it here and there, but never has it felt so full, so profound. I am opening, being opened, and found.
On the way to Leavenworth last week, we stopped at a rest stop between Moses Lake and George, and there next to the sink in the Women’s Restroom was this small message that had been left by an unknown stranger. My mother didn’t see it; the two other women in the bathroom didn’t spot it–who knows how long it has been there, and how many other people have passed by without noticing it. Maybe it was left there just to be a curiosity or something silly, but I like to think that instead it was someone fighting all the nasty things that usually get scrawled on bathroom stalls by leaving a message of kindness on a Post-It note for anyone with eyes to see. I will never meet that person, never know who it is, but I am deeply grateful to them just the same.
Also, a more personal act of kindness: someone I barely know signed me up for Carmen Torbus’s Spill It! workshop, something which although I am fairly certain I never told anyone this, I could not afford to do myself despite wanting to so very, very much. So thank you, Janet, from the bottom of my heart. I am only three days into the workshop, and I am loving it. It feels indescribably good to resurface from the basement covered in paint, to try new things, to watch as mistake after mistake transforms into something truly magical if I just remain calm, keep going, and trust myself. Even better to see a life lesson in that, one that I really need. And all of this makes me think of a quote by Emerson that I encountered on Chrysti’s blog this morning: “Happiness is a perfume which you cannot pour on someone without getting some on yourself.” I believe that is also true of kindness.
Also, thank you to everyone who has dropped by and left me a comment recently to let me know that you are there and thinking of me. It means a great deal to me, and I appreciate it so much. Huge hugs to all of you today.
