It is the sky that inspires. It is the sky. The sky.
sunrise
COLOR
I think about color. I think about color often.
I am sitting up in bed as I write, and before me is an abstract expressionist painting by a friend of my aunt Marcie (Marcia Smith Aron). Marked 1959 and “Floral Growth” on the back, it is tied to memories from my aunt’s house in Berkeley when I was a young child, and later to her San Francisco house. Bright with egg yolk yellows and intense pastels. Mom said the painting had been held by her sister for safe keeping. After my aunt died and the painting came to me, I traced the artist. By then, she lived just a few blocks away from where Gary and I first lived in Big Pink in the U District of Seattle. She had turned to calligraphy, become famous for it. Midori Kono Thiel was sorry to hear my aunt had died, delighted her painting was still alive, but no, she didn’t want it back. So that colorful oil, flush with memory, hangs across from our bed in Portland.
How art travels when we are having fun.
Continue readingONE THING or the OTHER
My 50th high school reunion is coming up in less than a week. It is actually our 51st graduation anniversary, but there was that pandemic. Actually, the pandemic is still raging, and locally it’s worse than ever with more cases daily than we saw in a month last year. I live in a tourism destination and we routinely see license plates from Texas and Florida, Georgia and Tennessee, not to mention plenty from Washington, Idaho, and California. Sometimes there are more cars from out of state than Oregon on the road. Who can blame them for coming?
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
There was fog this morning, lovely fog and a bit of wind during my run. Yes, I ran. I am running a bit faster than ten minutes miles. My old easy “light run” pace was nine-minute miles, and that might be what muscle memory is giving me now. I thought my knee might be giving me trouble again, but it didn’t. Sore, but not impeded.
It’s been a crazy week, crazy for a number of reasons I will not try to explain. Gorgeous skies. Pelicans fishing right in front of us. Sand sweeping in. And struggling to find out information. Is it because I am old or because I am a fanatical researcher that I sometimes know more about other people’s jobs than they do? It’s been happening for years. Does that happen to anyone else?
Continue readingMUDDLING ALONG
It is raining this morning, not hard but hard enough to provide an excuse for staying in. We walked long yesterday morning and the world was cold. There is snow at the summit of the coast range, but we aren’t driving anywhere today. We’ve had a fire in the wood stove every day for weeks. Rain means cloud cover and cloud cover means the temperature is up but there will be no gorgeous dawn or appaloosa sky.
Everyone I talk to seems to be apologizing for forgetfulness and mistakes. The entire country might be on high blood pressure meds from the tension, or something to address depression, moodiness, forgetfulness, errors, confusion, and general stress. Zoom, FaceTime, phone calls, and email are temporary fixes. Our drugs of choice are only coffee and alcohol. Last night Gary and I shared sparkling wine that sent us off to bed in good spirits. Literal and figurative, emotional and physical good spirits. It was a celebration of nothing in particular, only that we are still here, still muddling along.
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IMPERFECT PATIENCE 