Aesthetic Work

Your Choice (collage on nujabi paper, fabrics, rice and specialty papers)

 On this slushy, cold and damp Sunday afternoon, I find myself moping around, moving from one unfinished project to another.  I touch papers and canvases, fiddle with the oils and pastels, picking up, putting down, shifting side to side.

Ho, hum . . . this is not good.  Usually I go charging ahead in the new year, filled with goals and promises.  But not this one.  

This year it's more like a total pull-back.  For so long, I've dashed about, becoming a jack of all trades, master at none -- except at my work.  Over 25 years in the world of libraries and information research.  Nothing to sneeze at . . . and yet --

Feeling anxious, tired of the same-old, same-old.  Of course, as soon as you say that, watch out.  Life throws a whammie your way, and you instantly regret those thoughts.

Like the small work above, I suppose it's a choice of whether to continue moping and sighing, or just to get on with it. In a bit I'll light the fire, pull some crochet (my "gargantuan" granny afghan) onto my lap along with a mystery book and settle in for the duration.

So, hold tight, listen for the bird calls, find the tiny footprints in the snow -- the little things of life -- simplicity, a time for a general hunkering down and drawing inward.  Just like the natural world.  

I think I just convinced myself that this ennui is part of the seasonal process.  Soon the gardening and seed catalogs will start arriving in the mail, a sure sign that spring is on the way.  

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“I prefer winter . . . when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - 

the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, 

the whole story doesn't show.”

Andrew Wyeth