Godwinks

The Great Cats is a puzzle we just finished at the cabin...over about a week or so.  One of those great puzzles that you just pore over when you wake up early or you have a few minutes in the late afternoon or evening.  See if you can put in a few pieces.  The painting is by Peter Kull.  It was about an 8 in a one to ten range of difficulty with 10 being HARD.  Lots of oranges and browns made it pretty darn challenging.  But we enjoyed it.  Found it at a garage sale for 10 cents.

The need to write and the need to paint both comes sometimes like some overwhelming urges that threatens to take my breath away or make me dizzy.  It’s hard to describe but if you are a writer or an artist you will understand.  I cannot think that other creatives feel quite the same but perhaps they do…dancers must dance, singers must sing, knitters must knit…

After I have been inundated these past days with a lot of people and commitments that keep me from both of these “fundamentals” for awhile and I begin to gasp at the neediness of my creativity.  It often comes after I have been reading a lot too…suddenly the reading of another’s words just begin to make my finger itch and soon I am off and running again.  To what audience I have no idea.  (Maybe it is because Autumn likes to read my blogs.)😜

In my youth, drawers filled up with old papers and short stories that never got finished.  Once I discovered sketching, notebooks began to fill up too.

I just finished reading Being Mortal by Atul Gwande and am full of thoughts like “what is courage?” and “When the end is near when is enough enough?”  It has caused me to think about what I value most and would most hate to have give up.  After the company of my husband and children and I think it would be writing and painting.  Time alone in a good quiet place in the comfort of birds and sunshine.  Like the cabin or my studio in FL (in good weather). 

This week there has not been much time for “contemplation” but that makes the quiet time all the more sweet when it comes.  Chores are done, the wine is poured, the wind has switched around to the south and there is sunshine.  Guests are gone and 

I pick up the book I’ve chosen to read next…like a treasure sent by the gods of happiness.  A new book.  

This one I picked by the title and by the back cover at a recent garage sale.   Not the way I normally pick books by recommendations and by reading reviews.  I was struck by the title which was made more amusing since I have been working all week on a jigsaw puzzles picturing tigers and lions.  The title is The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht.

The first chapter begins when the main character’s grandfather dies of cancer (a disease he has kept secret from everyone except his granddaughter).  And the cultural rituals around the keeping and nurturing of his soul begin.

So I am to begin to read about end of life just as I finished another one. Sharon Feathers would call this a “Godwink”.  Another way to look at serendipity or coincidence as perhaps not exactly as random as one might think.