Free range vs. Fenced in

Sometimes I want to colour within the lines. At those times, I say give me a colouring book full of professionally penned drawings of exceedingly perfect images the way I either expect to see them or in ways I could never have imagined them myself. I want to participate in fill in the tiny spaces cordoned off by bold dark lines. I bump up against those boundaries outlining and detailing sailing boats, clowns, flowers with the tip of my marker and am content to be confined by those elegant fences and cul de sacs. With already drawn pictures, I know where to stop and start. I shut a part of my brain off and am pleased by the process of giving over of creative control. My task is singular. I fill in the prescribed blank spaces with colours that suit this vision of a fish or a bowl of fruit or a butterfly. I can choose to just see one space at a time and not all the other spaces they are connected to. Sometimes I get an urge to make the grass green blue and the sky green in these mass produced pictures, but when I am in a mood for colouring books, I 'd rather stick to what is expected. However, it is also a perfect opportunity to see what silver hair might look like or green eyelashes.

Image from: prettylittlethings.typepad.com

There are other times when I want to have a blank page in front of me and a range of my favourite coloured markers. When I get an itch to draw, even the edge of the page is no boundary. I want to let the marker point lead the way and guide my ideas onto the page. I want to be surprised by what comes out a little bit. I want to be open to the vagaries of the pen. Something inevitably changes between when I imagine it and when I produce it.

Today I am in a drawing mood, how about you?

Comments

I entered August without you.

I won't visit you this month. You won't call. I will raid your garden and you won't get any of the vegetables. I will make plans without telling you about them. We'll go to the store and not buy you one single thing. Whole books will be read and I will not tell you which ones. I will watch movies and not inform you. The nasturiums will ripen. Last month was different. I changed my schedule and took time off work to be with you. I dropped all kinds of plans for us to be together. You sent me messages, I received them. I picked up food that I thought you would like at the store and sent you pictures of every beautiful thing I saw. I sang with you. We watched the Great Canadian Baking Show. You chose the recipe for the garlic scape pesto and gave me instructions for making the gooseberry jam. I am in August without you. You are in July.

Fists full of lettuce

It is a pot of a variety of lettuce plants. It was planted by my mom. She has been living with Stage 4 bile duct cancer for at least 1.5 years (that we know of, probably a lot longer). Standing and gardening are becoming harder as time goes on. She learned about gardening from her dad as a kid and kept on gardening every year of her adult life. Sometimes the gardens were tiny or rudimentary, but with the help of my dad , they have become major and, at times elaborate, growing projects over the years. Now it is a collection of raised beds and regular beds that hold a host of plants, vegetable and flowers. Something that was clear that first spring with Stage 4 cancer is that gardening would continue in a big way, cancer or no cancer. It was important to order the seeds and start them inside and get them planted outside, no matter what. Spending time together in the summer with cancer now consistently involves gardening and following instructions. Plant...

Keep telling yourself that.

We talk to ourselves everyday, all day (and night) for the whole of our lives. We started talking to ourselves before we knew we were a self, we forget what we said because we forget everything from before...when we were too young and busy developing our brain to remember those early years. There is still lingering residue of long forgotten conversations I have had with myself as a toddler sitting around in the crevices...sloughing off occasionally into words I tell myself still. We talk non-stop, and not just with dialogue. Our goosebumps communicate to us, our tingly feelings, our neurons, our peripheal vision. They are all submitting data into our self and expecting us to react, respond or all to often, expecting what they are sending us will be ignored. After all that talking, you'd think we'd know what we think about most things, but occasionally we are stumped. Unless we stop what we are doing and really concentrate sometimes that voice(s) ...

Growing Versions

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