NATURE RULES

After taking Kristen Doty's colored pencil workshop,
I have been experimenting with the medium,
which I haven't used in a long time.

With a bang, the wind slammed the bedroom window shut. We live in a windy city, and San Francisco, like most cities near large bodies of water, feels the power of nature each day. The wind is strongest in springtime when the temperatures in the interior can reach peaks of 100 degrees or more while the Pacific Ocean remains cold. If you've ever stuck your toes into the Pacific Ocean in Northern California, you will remember the chill sent through your bones with that bare touch. Since moving to the city, we have lived in high-rises that exacerbate the wind that comes directly from the ocean. The buildings create tunnels that thrust the wind down the street, whipping tree branches, hats, and people.

The fierce wind made me think of the few birds that populate the courtyard framed by the building complex we live in. The trees there sway, rustle, and bend with the wind. Usually, the finches sing early in the morning, and I watch them as they fly up three more stories to a small deck that has plantings along the railings. The finches hide there, away from the wind, for a little while. Yesterday, a crow tried to cling to the top of one of the branches of the trees but gave up after being pitched back and forth.

The bang of the window woke me from a sound sleep. I tried my latest sleep-inducing exercise, Cognitive Shuffling, which I recently read about in a NY Times article. I mumbled Pluto to myself and then added a string of words beginning with P until I ran out, then started with L words, and somewhere in there, I fell back to sleep. I sleep much better than I did when I was younger and was full of responsibilities and concerns, and even younger when I was full of fear of the dark and the sound of the mantel clock ticking in another room. I don't nap during the day because I think of my dad, an insomniac, who would stretch out on the living room floor during his afternoon break from his studio, but then would toss and turn most of the night.

I have tried many different remedies for getting to sleep. Now, I don't do any of them because I usually don't need them. I sleep profoundly. Previously, I murmured to myself a set of songs. Or I counted backwards from 100. I found reading to be helpful for a long time, but then the novels that I chose were so compelling that I stayed awake longer just to finish one more chapter. Sometimes, I turn to Walking: One Step at a Time and Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge because each of them offer thoughts on simplicity, life challenges, and the need to step away from a busy life (or right now, from the news) to examine the ordinary things that continue no matter what else is occurring. Now, if I find myself taking a long time to go to sleep, I get up, walk around, and go back to bed. That window last night banging brought back lots of anxious thoughts and tensions from the news, and I gladly looked for a way to distract my mind to sleep. Pluto, photo, ping, phone, pong, pill, plunge, pollen....

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Douglas Wood suggested these words to use this weekend: Gumption. Grit. Fortitude.Righteousness.Freedom. Independence: Pride. Persistence. Stamina. Tenacity. Backbone. Determination. Resolution. Honor. Dignity. Empathy. Sacrifice. Service.  All good words to remember and to instill in everything we do.

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Something for me to celebrate: my workspace is finally getting cleared of all the art supplies I brought with me. I have found a place for paints, brushes, cans of colored pencils, trays of marking pens, sketchbooks, glue, and all the other supplies that encourage me to be creative and try new things. I now have a clear space that I have been missing for a long time.

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Check out Kristen Doty's website for some spectacular colored pencil artwork:

https://kristendoty.com/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAacciEyUTfWXGPmP3tu9KeDgakK0ZIK10mWOYVZ7pQ1bQHS-YJOVLw7APf-CRg_aem_CsxKXs6T0V3GYGJc-ZJaqQ

DIFFERENT WINDOWS OF LIFE

Country Road by Bill Slavin

The light captured us. We chose our new place because of the light streaming through every large window in each room. The windows let the light in, which also means I can see through them into the windows of the building next to us, where I catch a glimpse of the new mom as she walks her baby back and forth, and the man sitting in the opposite building reading in his easy chair. I can see people being dropped off by Lyft/Uber/taxi below and watch as others put suitcases in trunks and drive away. And they all can see me.

We've always loved looking out the windows in any place we've lived, but we've never been able to see directly into our neighbors' windows before. There was a tall wooden wall outside our first apartment in Mountain View, a driveway and garages in another, and our first two home purchases were corner lots with windows facing away from other homes. In Japan, we were 14 stories up with a small park and a busy city street below. No other buildings impeded our view of Mt. Fuji. In France, our patio doors looked out across a narrow street onto the roof of another building. Our last house in Danville was placed on a lot at an angle, so our windows didn't look directly into our neighbors. Our new view is disconcerting. We sometimes feel like Peeping Toms. We are working to look without really looking at anything that catches our eyes. We now understand why the people in many of the condos keep their curtains drawn all the time. We are discovering one way that city life can be so different.

Window by Bill Slavin

This past weekend, we were reminded of the difference when we took a trip to Pt. Reyes Station, a small town near the edge of the Pacific Coast and positioned close to the San Andreas Fault (it runs through the bay on one side of Pt. Reyes). Bill came to wander around Tomales Bay State Park to capture on camera some of the tule elk living in the park. He didn't see any elk, but he took some evocative pictures.

Ranch Land Near Tomales Bay by Bill Slavin

I came for the writers' workshop, "Writing the Language of Color in the Home of Sam Francis," led by Elizabeth Fishel and Susan Tillet. The workshop was held in the house where Sam Francis, the abstract expressionist, lived with his fifth wife. When he died, the house was purchased to become a writer's retreat. The interior walls of the house have been painted with colors that Sam Francis used in his paintings. Bookcases line the main room of the house, painted a deep teal. Three of the tall bookcases are filled with books written by writers who came to the house to write. The spirit of many of the writers fills this vibrant house.

Wandering through the natural garden mixed with its flowering native, some non-native plants and bumblebees, I came across a few small sculptures, set not as the dominant theme of the garden, but tucked into the bushes and trees as if they too had grown up out of the ground. I stopped, listened, and heard nothing but silence until a few birds chirped in the apple trees. The silence made me think of our city life, where there is a constant thrum like a river, sometimes a roar, of traffic. I took a deep breath of the silence before I sat down to write.

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Mesa Refuge in Pt. Reyes offers space for writers and activists:

https://mesarefuge.org

Look for future writers' workshops with Elizabeth Fishel and Susan Tillet here:

http://wednesdaywriters.com/events.html

Check out Sam Francis' work here:

https://samfrancis.com

View from the window   May 2025