benches and brushes

I came upon this artist in the Rhododendron Garden Monday afternoon. After being ‘the speaker’ at one of those meetings, 7am. After scrambled eggs and a bath and my telephone interview a clear ‘No’ both ways, and after delicious coffee at my new Starbucks (San Luis Obispo to Portland) and after lunch and a long, long time on my sacred bench in the Garden – the shining sun sending me off to dreamland.

So I’m off the bench and strolling around, at one with geese and ducks and colors in abundance, and I came upon this artist. So’s I went over and said, “Hey,” and “So lovely,” and she thanked me. And I marveled at her little traveling pack of water-colors and a brush, and she said she’d taken it all over the world. And here I was maybe 30 blocks from home, dancing on every possibility the breeze was swishing by. She let me take a picture:

Which, if you consider this anonymous photo:

Catches it really good, sittin’ on a bench with a sketch pad in her lap.

So, this is nice. Nice art and human-ness and the natural world, and it’s here as today’s post, in part, because in Monday’s Morning Pages I gave considerable ink to an urge to raise my sorry and weary self up from own history as an artist and – Please – begin to rock and roll again. After the enlightenment, the laundry. “Take out the papers and the trash.” Squeeze some of my own colors out on a funky palette and pick up a brush. I mean, I am unemployed and everything, and I can see Mount Hood out the bedroom window, and there’s nature all about calling my name. Be nice to talk about a bunch of it with my mouth entirely closed. And this keypad off on a snooze.