blue sky day

Why does this day seem so wonderful?  The sky is that washed-clean intense blue after it rains.   It’s July—it’s supposed to be torrid and unbearable and instead there’s a cool breeze blowing.  I have the studio door open and the ceiling fan stirring things up.  Whatever I play on the stereo suddenly seems like the right music, and what’s on the easel seems fascinating for a change.  I’m spending a few days putting the late spring’s work to rights.  It was plenty flawed, with hundreds of sequences that jarred or disappointed.  I’m painting back into it with this breeze and some wild jazz behind me like a tailwind.

Why is this day blessed?  Because it’s early morning and the day stretches before me with no commitments. I can dress like a slob and work until I want to quit.  I can sit in the shade in the ruin with some cold mint tea and just lapse into dreamy thought.  Maybe by the end of this day three paintings will be finally resolved and finished… until I wake up the next day and notice a few more places that aren’t syncopated, that fall flat.

The day is special because Marie sent me a photograph to bless it: her mother planting flowers in the garden with her granddaughter, 5 years old.  They both seem completely unaware that they are being photographed. What arrests me about this photograph is that there is no less sense of discovery in the face of the grandmother than in the face of the child.  It’s a photograph of a state of being that is extraordinary– to be expected in a five year old and hardly ever observed in someone in their seventh decade. That image has stayed with me all morning.  It has inspired me to look at this day with wonder.