This painter wants to live in more than one world ..

I am waiting for pictures to come through my email so I can update my Facebook page. Patience, I have it. Sometimes more than others .. not more than other people I am saying but at some times more than others. I am somewhat of an impatient person. And sometimes a patient person. Maybe rather a tolerant person, though impatient. My patience is running out.

Maybe that is what is happening to me in what might be the second half of my life. Impatience. Let’s get going, let’s get this paint dry. Bring out a hair dryer, there is more paint to add! And, then, more to take off again. It’s one step forward and two steps back for me.

It rained today and I love the rain. I sat peacefully at the side of my bed with my feet against the window and I quietly watched the rain. I love a good mid-day rain and I love a good midnight rain. I love to watch the rain falling across the cloud-filled sky and I love to watch the occasional rain coming from a mostly clear blue sky. In Santa Fe, we used to have monsoons followed by spectacular rainbows. Rain, consistently, causes me to stop my busy life and take notice, breathe and rest.

I’m just back from Galveston Island ArtWalk. The island weather was moody, I am happy to say. It was sunny the first day and the sky was filled with the art of clouds the second day. I noticed lightning as I stood by the seashore for the last hour before noon on Sunday.

I found treasures by the sea of both the tangible and intangible kind. I stared for a long time at the clouds, lightning and strong waves that consented to the wind. I wrapped up in a white sheer something from my Pakistani neighbor and watched the water. I breathed in the sea. I was in a cove. I stood on rocks. Eventually, I looked down around me, after about an hour, and explored the gifts water had brought ashore.

I brought back a black and white something fabric, something strong, rolled almost into a rope. I cut it from the rocks and brought it home. It is eight feet in length and stylish as can be. I found a brick, weathered, two holes still running through it weathered as well. They are seascape binoculars. Last, I found in this space a piece of driftwood delicately carved to look like a runner’s torch. The gifts of the sea, both tangible and intangible.

What is intangible, the salt air, the ions, the way I always return from the sea feeling like the best part of me lives unaltered by the stress of this world. Galveston offers continuous gifts. After the hour before noon, the lightning passed and my kids and I traveled east along the island from San Luis pass. The island was moody, yes. The waves were rolling far out as I could see. I wanted to swim past them. I wanted to enter that world, but I held back.

I held back and stayed where I could still reach the sand. The pull of the salt water was strongest I had felt since I was a child in Hawaii. I could swim freestyle and five minutes later still be in the same place. It was wonderful. I swam through seaweed. It washed along my body from first my hand outstretched, along my arm, across my abdomen and continuing from my legs to feet. Occasional seaweed, a heightening of the senses within the water. A variety of touch, unexpected texture in the softness of the saltwater.

After swimming, I sat alone within the water. All I could see were waves and sky. I sat at the edge of this grand space. There was an interplay of emotion, this living breathing earth, this painter wants to live in more than one world.

I am back. And it was not a dream. It is still with me. I bring these intangibles home. I am altered, I am changed, I am made better, always better, in my experience of the sea.

Thank you for listening,

c.s.