I woke up this morning to so much loveliness, to attempt to capture it in words is like blowing a dandelion clock into the breeze and doing your best to collect all the pieces back again shortly after.
Members of my drawing group had posted many of their things. There’s been sunflowers and periwinkles and thistles of the kind that grow in Canada, a glorious shiny pumpkin that has been sitting majestically in a kitchen far away, a pot plant named after peace, and doodles of a very peaceful dog, stretched out and sleeping on the floor.
And as I uncurled my eyes, I understood the loveliness that someone else had seen and translated through their fingers, in lands very far away, now seen through my own eyes, and I got to imagine the sunflowers blooming and the very particular spot in the garden where the periwinkle might grow.
I was reminded of the funny way my horses try to eat a thistle, and even though we call them a weed, how beautiful they are if we just let them be what they are without any other label, and I felt grateful.
This is the power of art and creating. Not the works of “professionals” who have spent years honing their craft upon the page (which is undoubtedly gorgeous too) , but simple lines and colours of someone who for a few moments paid attention and decided to capture it on the page. And here I was, the other side of the world, smiling first thing in the morning and resolving that very shortly, I shall attempt to do the same.
And then as if my heart could handle any more (hearts are amazing like that, they grow and grow and grow), Sara Santa Clara, who belongs to the periwinkles, wrote in an essay she just posted:
“Jane has a way of talking and telling you everyone can draw that makes you want to believe her and make it so.”
Which made me wonder, at what point did we ever believe the opposite? And in the unbelieving of this, imagine what other loveliness might flow?
Making and creating is magic. It makes changes in the world