3 May 2020. Family.
Seems like everyone is having a bath this morning--first, the lady house finches, then the mister, who makes a quick appearance to check in on them--and now the towhee, my friend. I greet them when I'm walking in the evening--each one, as if I know them. Which in a very real sense I do. A pleasure..
We look for pleasure, of course--especially when it's a part of meaning. This picture of my mother, for example, taken in a backyard in San Diego in the 1920's. Already as I knew her from first memories--wide forehead, almost squarish, but at the same time with a roundedness that was alert and appealing. She'd pull her hair back in braids, tucked in on either side of her head--I always return to them. Yes, that's how they wore their hair then, but more particularly, it was Alice...
She chose the name herself. Sarah wouldn't do. Theodore Roosevelt's daughter--an independent spirit. ("I can either govern the country, or I can govern Alice--but not both at once...") My mother found that meaningful, even though she lived before such views could be taken for granted. (Can they now, even?) So that when I read some of the term papers she wrote for a journalism class at San Diego State in the 1950's (she went to college very late--always a dream on her part) I was surprised by how seriously se seemed to take the often quite pedestrian comments of her professors, noted in the margins--since I knew she was no doubt better read in all regards...
C has my mother's dictionary. The big Websters 3rd, always open on the stand my father made for her. I sometimes think to cover it, to protect the pages--but C knows better--that the book needs to live...
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Made the drawing yesterday evening, after a walk, in the half-light, here at the table. Berating myself for why, yet again, I was working from a photograph, which so easily reduces to just information--here the last thing I'd want, of course. But then another smudge or two and I forgot all that--something came together, and all of a sudden, there she was...
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Made the drawing yesterday evening, after a walk, in the half-light, here at the table. Berating myself for why, yet again, I was working from a photograph, which so easily reduces to just information--here the last thing I'd want, of course. But then another smudge or two and I forgot all that--something came together, and all of a sudden, there she was...
