Sitting and staring

Today, I'm reminded of the baseboall great Satchel Page's oft quoted," Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I  just sits." An unexpected delay of a work-related appointment has given me the gift of a hitherto unplanned afternoon. Yes, the studio needs a good sort. The garden is (perhaps riskily) calling for seeds. I have really been planning to go through and file all the piles of receipts and GET MYSELF ORGANIZED for the new year (hardly new anymore, you might note). 

But I find myself sitting and looking out into damp, gray between-winter-and-spring air and light and I just sit.

Sometimes its good to sit.

The creative life is full of adventure (even if it only shows up on the inside of your eyeballs.) When one is a self-employed artist, there is the ever present tension between amking art and making a living and it takes a lot of juggling to keep it together sometimes. I, like many of us, simply like action, I live at full-speed-ahead.

And then I sit.

You (I) need both. You (I) must let minutes wash over us when we can. Remind ourselves that time is finite; in 100 years (unless Singularity DOES come to pass, or the Mayan calendar ends us all in a bang) everyone you know and everyone you don't know who is walking around here on earth will be gone. And so, no matter how important it all seems, it is just a drop in the bucket when you look at the big picture. So let the drops fall where they may for a few hours. Sit. think. or just sit.

One thing I am thinking about is some of the thought about romance that I am reading in Barbara Lazear Ascher's wonderful book Isn't it Romantic; Finding the magic in everyday life. Here's a quote to ponder as you sit today:

"The romantic has to believe the bread crumbs were left as a trail, that the dots will make a whole....Faith doesn't require answers but a trust that if we dare reach out a hand another one, unforeseen will receive it. That we will be made whole. The ulitmate romance. Exactly as Michelangelo painted it in the center of the Sistine Chapel ceiling."

And Yes. I am puttering around in the studio today and making some progress on the annual clean, sort and toss that I force myself to do in order to avoid a manditory appearance on some reality show or another devoted to hoarding. But I am doing so very, very softly. Like the air and the gray heavy skies. Like the seeds underground waiting for the next increment of warmth. Reminding myself to think a bit about the spiraling fossil of an ammonite once alive, then dead, buried turned to stone, washed up again on a different shore.

(P.S. Speaking of nature, the next El Cielo studio retreat/workshop is almost full-to-the-brim. If you are thinking about attending  send me an email through the contact form on the sidebar. $160 if you pay before March 1. Potluck on Friday night through Sunday afternoon, most supplies included.)

View from home and El Cielo Studio.

NATURE-INSPIRED SURFACE DESIGN

March 25-27

Find color, shape, form and inspired design for new surface design tools at this spring-is-sprung weekend in the blooming Texas Hill Country. We’ll do sun prints, leaf-inspired thermofaxes and screenprinting with dye, flour paste resist and more.

Comments

[Leslie Tucker Jenison]

Beautiful photos,Suzie, and you are so right: sometimes one needs to sit and observe. One of the true gifts of being an artist is to spending time looking and thinking about things.