At the end of the day, the golden sun is setting. I've just finished washing out the paints in the laundry room...like and not unlike the thousands of times I have cleaned up paints for children over the years. I am perched on a small little ladder because it is too hard to crouch in the small corner. The hose splatters color and water all over the walls.... How many years have I cleaned up paints? Countless...only this time I clean up for the elderly people I have just painted with who have memory loss...well so much for me too. When I arrived this afternoon at 3 pm, hitting the ground running I sang a naming song going around the table, and promptly forgot everyone's name...perhaps this is me in about lets say twenty or twenty five years..moving in that vague way, with that vacant stare....stilled into some kind of vague pain by the moments that no longer connect...
I really did hit the ground running...when I arrived, everyone was sitted around the table and I just gave out some strips of paper. and markers.... then I grabbed the canvases and said " Hang On A Minute" as I tediously squeezed out paint into palettes as people waited...However, those paints that I grabbed from the crowded cabinet form some kind of path that we followed through the jungle of forgotten memories....
(all that anxiety mattered nought.)
and then
Once the brush was picked up and the painting started, the dancing creative spirit was theirs.....and each one painted...a bird, a butterfly, a series of shapes, a flower...
My commentary is that the independent creative spirit carries those who pick up the brush and mix it in the paint...then the decisions about this shape and that color take over...despite glasses with one lense perched on head, despite the wandering and the uncertainty...and the shaking hand..and the memory loss....
Holding up the butterfly and the bird we applaud the completed paintings...
the golden sun is setting on the lavendar snow....streaks of purple in the sky...by the time I get back from washing the brushes and palettes in the laundry room the table is clean and set for supper...the sun continues to set on memory loss and I still can't recall every ones names..I guess it will take a few more name songs..
my poignant time with this new group gives me even more time to wonder where will I be in twenty years....will I be fed or guided with a walker...
I watch the sunset as supper is served.....then pack up and take my cart with me out the door.
I'll be back to sing with this group on wednesday. Since it is Elvis's birthday on friday we'll sing his songs this week....."Hound Dog"
and "Pretty Woman" and more...
Monday, January 4, 2016
Mocking Birds and Magnolias
For the afternoon I am back in my familiar surroundings where I have taught for a year and a half. The married couple who have many infirmities is there and I set everyone up with watercolors.
Then a woman with a bright plaid coat arrives. Her southern accent is comforting and I ask her where she is from. "Mississippi" she drawls and I regale her briefly with tales of my Texas past. In asking her what she wants to paint she tells me that she wants to paint a mockingbird in a magnolia tree. That's the state bird of Mississippi. She's been away from her home for over 64 years, but still has her stately drawl and the image in her heart is the state bird. I google the image on my phone and a nice image comes up, from an old print. I draw it for her and she carefully sets to work, painting the creamy fragrant leaves white with yellow overtones. I can almost smell it. She works through the feathers on the bird with care. As we all work around the table we note that she and another woman who is weaving away are both from Mississippi.
How unusual is that I think? Before long, they're exchanging stories of picking cotton and we recite our holy litany of southern food; fried chicken, cornbread, turnip greens, peach cobbler, iced tea and black eyed peas....
Its just past the New Year and I didn't eat my traditional black eyed peas after all. She tells me that for every black eyed pea you eat, it will be a dollar that you be getting. So I remain poor. But actually I'm a millionaire as I sit here with my elderly people who paint with such beauty and depth. Showing me how rich the creative spirit is and how it bypasses infirmity, how it doesn't care if memory doesn't support it anymore...how it is there curled up quietly inside the heart and soul, ready to be releashed like the butterflies I drew quickly today that were then painted by those with memory loss
later in the afternoon.
Then a woman with a bright plaid coat arrives. Her southern accent is comforting and I ask her where she is from. "Mississippi" she drawls and I regale her briefly with tales of my Texas past. In asking her what she wants to paint she tells me that she wants to paint a mockingbird in a magnolia tree. That's the state bird of Mississippi. She's been away from her home for over 64 years, but still has her stately drawl and the image in her heart is the state bird. I google the image on my phone and a nice image comes up, from an old print. I draw it for her and she carefully sets to work, painting the creamy fragrant leaves white with yellow overtones. I can almost smell it. She works through the feathers on the bird with care. As we all work around the table we note that she and another woman who is weaving away are both from Mississippi.
How unusual is that I think? Before long, they're exchanging stories of picking cotton and we recite our holy litany of southern food; fried chicken, cornbread, turnip greens, peach cobbler, iced tea and black eyed peas....
Its just past the New Year and I didn't eat my traditional black eyed peas after all. She tells me that for every black eyed pea you eat, it will be a dollar that you be getting. So I remain poor. But actually I'm a millionaire as I sit here with my elderly people who paint with such beauty and depth. Showing me how rich the creative spirit is and how it bypasses infirmity, how it doesn't care if memory doesn't support it anymore...how it is there curled up quietly inside the heart and soul, ready to be releashed like the butterflies I drew quickly today that were then painted by those with memory loss
later in the afternoon.
Each One in Their Own Way Finding Their Way to Beauty
It's a bright sunny January day. The new year has begun and I am beginning a new job at a new place in the same place I've been working for a year and a half. This time I arrive in the open room to do art with people who live in assisted living.
With hesitation a woman lingers in the doorway. I ask her;
"Do you want to do art?" She looks at me and says
"I'm still working it through in my head." She doesn't come back.
A woman I've worked with before arrives and we take off like a rocket. She paints what turns out to be her first watercolor. I draw the fake lavendar tulips for the other woman who arrives. An older couple arrives and they watch. I encourage them, but they don't paint. I tell them that having an audience is just as important as anything. She tells me again and again that her husband has several degrees in art. He slumps in his chair, his eyes alive and curious, but he does not pick up a brush.
Later I hang up the tulip painting in the small gallery as well as the first watercolor by the other artist. The paintings shine with their own beauty.... Later the woman who did the tulips calls out to me in the hallway. Her eyes aglow with excitement, in disbelief she says she can hardly realize that her work is up and she wonders who will see it. I say, people will see it...don't worry, they will see it...
These are my people. I sing to them from my heart telling them
"Each one in their own way finding their way to beauty" It is a song I have sung many times and yes I sing it again and again, weaving their name into the song and yes they are finding their way to beauty, past the walkers and the shaking hand, past the memory loss and the physical infirmities. Yes, they are finding their way to beauty. Yes and I watch them soar.
With hesitation a woman lingers in the doorway. I ask her;
"Do you want to do art?" She looks at me and says
"I'm still working it through in my head." She doesn't come back.
A woman I've worked with before arrives and we take off like a rocket. She paints what turns out to be her first watercolor. I draw the fake lavendar tulips for the other woman who arrives. An older couple arrives and they watch. I encourage them, but they don't paint. I tell them that having an audience is just as important as anything. She tells me again and again that her husband has several degrees in art. He slumps in his chair, his eyes alive and curious, but he does not pick up a brush.
Later I hang up the tulip painting in the small gallery as well as the first watercolor by the other artist. The paintings shine with their own beauty.... Later the woman who did the tulips calls out to me in the hallway. Her eyes aglow with excitement, in disbelief she says she can hardly realize that her work is up and she wonders who will see it. I say, people will see it...don't worry, they will see it...
These are my people. I sing to them from my heart telling them
"Each one in their own way finding their way to beauty" It is a song I have sung many times and yes I sing it again and again, weaving their name into the song and yes they are finding their way to beauty, past the walkers and the shaking hand, past the memory loss and the physical infirmities. Yes, they are finding their way to beauty. Yes and I watch them soar.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Grateful
Grateful
May 9th, 2015
for Gypsy
I lie here with the cats
and the lilac scent
and I am grateful.
Grateful to have my cat
Gypsy at my feet,
Grateful that my other cat Ocean
is lying in the window,
Grateful that the birds sing,
Grateful for the faraway buzz
of a lawnmower,
and Grateful for the grass that grows.
Grateful to watch Gypsy
move to the window
where he sticks his nose out,
just below the 3 x-rays of his stomach,
that I placed in the window
a few days ago,
so the light could shine through,
Grateful for the dog’s bark
and the birds chirping,
and my neighbor walking by
with his dog on a leash.
Grateful for technology
yet never could figure out
exactly what happened,
Grateful
for the hidden mysterious
ways of healing
there behind the veil
at the center of things.
Grateful for the vets
that attended to Gypsy
Grateful for those I spoke to about Gypsy
and for the times
I said nothing at all
and just backed away and
let the mystery that is at the
center of all things
do its work.
*******
Grateful that Gypsy is
licking his paw.
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