Towards the end of my wild and precious life
I can look towards far fewer years ahead than years behind me
Who to pass on my wild and precious life?
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| SHOES |
I am sitting outside at Toby's Bar in Pt. Reyes Station with three journals in front of me, one a brown-covered, well-used sketchbook with only two pages left to fill, a new sketchbook with bright empty pages, and the last, an old, heavy lined journal with an orange cover with the AAUW logo emblazoned on it. That journal accompanied me on Wednesday mornings to Elizabeth's writers group for many years.
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The decaf coffee sat cooling beside my hand as I paged through the old sketchbook looking at years of changes in my life and places and people I had seen. When I opened the orange journal, sheets of paper drifted out, filled with writing ideas that I had tucked away at Elizabeth's home for later, when later was never remembered because Covid halted our in-person meetings. The writers group had been gathering on Zoom since Covid, and the format had changed with writers reading more finished work than the drafts we often started in Elizabeth's home. I had tucked the journal into my writing shelf until this summer when I carried the journal to Elizabeth's writers retreat to be in-person with some of the members of our writers group. That flutter of papers reminded me of some good writing ideas and what life had been like before Covid..
A voice interrupted my reading. I looked up at a young woman who asked if she could share the bench.
"Of course," I said and the aroma of a ham and cheese sandwich drifted towards me. She set down her food and pulled out a small book, spread out a box of watercolors and began to draw. Surprised by this, I said, "You're an artist too."
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She let me leaf through the pages of her sketchbook filled with quiet watercolors of places and people she found in San Francisco. She used the sketchbook to draw ideas for finished work as well as ideas for stories. I showed her some of my sketches that I had made while my husband and I moved from one place to four others in one year, with my sketching gathering strength the more I drew.
As I watched her draw and paint, I thought of all the people who had affected my life in large and small ways, in years or in a brief moment and felt grateful for the inspiration they had provided. I handed her my card, gathered my belongings, and thought, "Here was the one I was passing on some of my wild and precious life."
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| In Nancy Hays Hills' class we did a fun exercise with blobs of watercolor |
Check out Friends of Calligraphy's Instagram page for examples of Nancy Hays Hills' work:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DA8pzy3vEhF/?hl=en&img_index=5
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| Window View October 2024 |
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If you are overjoyed by the election results this week, please do what I have done. The first thing I did (besides dance around the room) was to make a list of actions that Congress needs to take to restore the functions of our democracy. I sent the list to each of my representatives. I will follow up next week with another.