My privilege

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell

This is the third time I have done this blog. This one blog. I think the ones that didn't have the right message have been abandoning ship. NO pictures or artwork for this one. I didn't have my cell phone with me which is why I was where I was in the first place. There are no accidents. 

I am aware that I have the privilege of living in a beautiful place, having a job I enjoy. And having friends that help me out. I can only hope to return the favor. I have a talent that I can use to the benefit of my church, and the causes I want to help with.  My passion for gardening allows me to help other people create gardens that can reach their potential. 

I continue to talk in this blog about how grateful I am, because everyday something happens that reminds me that I am in the perfect place, at the perfect time, doing exactly what I need to be doing, even when I think I am in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Today I discovered a tunnel under the freeway on the west side of Macy's that leads to Old Town Sacramento. It was built that way, there are signs. I left my cell phone at my friend Loras this weekend and Lora and I were meeting across from the Holiday Inn, in downtown Sac, and I wasn't sure what that meant. In the process of circumventing the hotel, I discovered the tunnel. I must take a walk with the little dog and see where it leads, how far the walk is and what is over there. 

Discovery and adventure are a privilege. 

Gratitude

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Bertrand Russell

Life has it's moments. Good days and bad, smooth roads and bumpy passages, minor challenges and and huge obstacles, times of still water and smooth sailing. I love this quote, it really speaks to my life. I do without things that most people would balk at. 

Out the back door

But I live here. 

For every bad day, bumpy passage,huge obstacle or patch of still water, I can walk out my back door and look at the river. I close my eyes and hear more birds than I can name. I listen to the quail.  I have a pair of great horned owls that live in our neighborhood: they roost in OUR trees. Every night Orion is out my front door. In the summer, most nights there is a cool delta breeze. I have a garden that feeds my soul. I have ample space to be creative. I have a variety of wonderful people in my life, a job I love, and a wonderful landlord who is also my friend. 

I don't have a lot of fancy stuff and gadgets, and life is hard sometimes because I choose to do without a full time job ( I have stopped looking: exercise in futility ). If I had it all, I would be bored.

But I live here, and I am so very grateful. 

The Power of Friendship

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.

Jim Morrison

Medusa Sun 2015

My friend Q and I met in a life drawing class at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill California. We had been looking at each others work for a couple of classes, and one day I was at an easel behind her, and commented that I wished I had a style like hers. She said "I wish I could draw like you." We have been friends ever since. Q introduced me to Prisma Color Pencils and a lot of other things for which I am eternally grateful. I have never looked back. I have tried other mediums, but I prefer to work with point media: pencils, ink. And mixed media felt tip pens, watercolor washes but all with a point media for detal. This sun is Prisma Color marker, Prisma pencils, Farber Castille brush point markers, and Micron Pigma Black pens. 

When we first met, in our early twenties, one of the things we did was take off in one of our Bugs (We both had VW Bugs) and go drawing. Q's style is much flatter than mine, and when we would sit down and draw the same view or the same still life you could tell it was the same thing but the styles were 180 degrees apart. She really opened my eyes to looking at the world in a different way. Then, one of the tools she used was this round point drawing and caligraphy pen: the ink was in a cartridge that you changed when it ran out. Very fluid and sometimes very messy because they would occasionally leak. We would draw straight onto the paper. It required really being in tune with what you were drawing, and really paying attention. It also required being able to adjust away from absolute reality when things drifted a bit and creating the scene to fit. I don't use that kind of pen anymore, but I still like to go out and draw what is in front of me, with a pen, because it is a form of meditation. 

For my birthday this year She gave me this amazing bracelet. This is the Thank You card I am sending to her. Thank you for everything else as well, Q. Meeting you changed my life in the best way. 

Spring is here, or at least it feels like it.

"The more a woman likes her job, the better her self-image and the more she enjoys her life."

Grace Baruch

I have actually had a lot of jobs I have enjoyed. But the ones I have liked the most are the ones that have to do with creativity & art, and gardening, plants & animals. AND they seem to be interchangeable. I would rather spend time in the garden than almost anything else. Surrounded by life and growing things, Inside when I am drawing, or creating, to me it is growing something. I am creating an image from a little seed all the way through to the full grown final image. And sometimes I start withe something familiar, and it changes and becomes its own unique image. this sun is a good 

 example of that. The sun images go way back to when I was in high school. Most of them were full frontal faces and then I did a Sun and Moon image with this half profile and the front view combined. It turned into a signature image and the varieties have been endless. 

So right now one of the things that is good is I have an interesting job, that I enjoy doing. I am making a concerted effort to do artwork in the morning again -- putting some of the other things on the back burner, and I am getting ready to put in the 2015 vegetable garden. Life feels wonderful and I hope it goes on for a long time.