inspiration

The Drawing Process – A Manatee

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Does everyone’s drawing process start out the same – with an idea, and some idea of how you want it to look?

In this case, I did a couple preliminary sketches in pen and ink to get a feel for the manatee’s contours, and then went to a full page to do an underlying sketch in pencil. I figured I’d clean it up and proceed with what I had in mind. What you see isn’t that.

Then I realized what I’d had in mind was never going to happen. I decided to start sketching with just one brush and my watercolors and go from there. See what this little manatee wanted.

Letting one’s art or music or writing evolve is, I believe, what creating is all about. I’m not sure why, after all this time, it still surprises me that the result is nothing like what I imagined. Yet I like it.

I often come back and look at the drawing a ridiculous number of times, as if it might disappear, or maybe I never did it at all. But each time I see it, I smile.

It’s always a shade of me I’m still getting to know. Do you know that feeling?

p.s. Also known as sea cows, the manatee is one of the gentlest creatures on the planet, and a threatened or endangered species, depending on their location.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

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Isn’t it wonderful to start a new book and find it to be much better than you expected? This is one of those books.

In a tiny Tokyo café, one can time-travel to the past or future to meet the person they’re in a relationship with. There are several rules – the most critical is that you must return before the coffee gets cold. Another is that whatever transpires in the visit cannot change the future.

This tenderly told novel contains four stories about pairs of “regulars” in the cafe – lovers, husband and wife, sisters, parent and child – who time travel to see, know, or share one more thing about/with the person they love.

I am both charmed and touched by Kawaguchi’s debut novel.

Reaching Out for Love

/ still a dreamer / 4 Comments

It was a small shop in Easton, PA called The Nature Nook, maybe a decade or so ago. The beautiful craft items were all nature and wildlife themed, but the big attraction for me was the wide variety of lizards and reptiles in the store.

What I immediately liked about these people is how intensively they screened potential purchasers/adopters. They had no qualms about saying `no’ if they didn’t feel you’d be the right home.

I walked around the shop, admiring the incredible beauty of these animals. The shopkeeper walked with me, explaining what each one was, and a bit about them. I was not looking to bring one home, just admiring them, as I love animals.

We came to the cage of a stunning turquoise blue chameleon, and she took him out, handling him gently. I looked at him with soft amazement. He looked back at me, and reached his arms out to me, the universal gesture of wanting to be held.

Still unsure, I asked her, “What does he want?”

“He wants you to hold him,” she said. “He obviously really likes you.”

With some hesitation, I put out my hands, held him under his arms, and drew him closer. He curled up on my chest and closed his eyes. A few tears slid down my face. I was just so honored that this magnificent creature related to me that way.

I didn’t want to ever give him back; he was so sweet. Eventually, of course, I did, feeling terribly guilty that he would have to stay in a cage until a good person came along. But I will be forever grateful for that moment.

That gesture, so simple, reaching out for love with such trust and innocence. We, as humans, are supposed to be at the top of the chain here on Earth. But look at us. Can we not do better? Can we not reach out a little more?

Photo: Alex Cofaru / Shutterstock

Nature Photography Day

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Above, a view from a walking path that parallels the Delaware River in Frenchtown, NJ.

Each year, Nature Photography Day is celebrated on June 15. The NANPA, North American Nature Photography Association, was founded in 1994 to bring together people who shared a passion for photographing the natural world and a belief in its conservation value.

The first Nature Photography Day was established in 2006 to celebrate the organization’s love of nature and photography.

“One Gorgeous Read”

/ still a dreamer / 2 Comments

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”

In 2001, long before many recent books about magical libraries, Carlos Ruiz Zafón had published this book, #1 in the series, The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It was one of my Annual Library Sale picks. It’s a long read, nearly 500 pages, and I’m just past mid-way, but it’s so beautiful in the language and the writing, I thought to share a few quotes.

“In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”

“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn’t have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.” 

“Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it’s an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.” 

“I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.” 

p.s. The title of this post, was part of a review by Stephen King.

p.p.s. (Yes, yes, I know … I should have chosen a different mug.)