Next post
A quote: “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” ~~ Georgia O’Keeffe
I’ll start with a story …
**************************************************
Hearing her parents fight, she’d retreat to the tiny space at the back of the closet, the place she has secreted a sketch book and various stubs of pencil – graphic, charcoal – she cribbed from dad’s studio.
Over the years the same retreat and her book filled with ever more glorious landscapes. Rolling hills, soaring mountains, small towns hinted at in the misty valleys.
Watercolors brought sunlit meadows and soft twilights with ephemeral spheres of rainbow hue. Her hopes poured into each render. If only …
One particularly nasty row brought the police and CPS to remove her.
She was gone.
***************************************************
Now, it’s your turn.
.
.
.
.
.
. featured image, cropped, Adobe stock, standard license
GWB says: “Really? Just ten righteous people? In that town? At least it will only be one house.
“But, your will be done, Lord.”
And down the path she trod.
Cameron says: “You’re not the first to search for this city” she replied as we walked down the path. “But you actually found it which is impressive.”
“I gave up on the map and just kept walking.”
“Very smart since it’s not located in your world. ” she said. We stopped at the top of the hill.
“So you have a choice. Stay or leave.”
It was a tough choice but I don’t regret leaving it behind. It took me ten years of art lessons to recreate it and her in my mind. And I felt peace when the painting was done.
Dupin says: Long and arduous getting here, but my destination was in view. Would Haino remember little Aada?
Blistered feet from the unexpected walk these four days, after a jaguar attacked my donkey. Backpack stolen yesterday, and with it, my food and water. It hadn’t warmed much yet, so could continue and survive. Last night, a crevasse kept me from most of the wind. Still, it was frigid, and sleep was hard to find.
Now, everything was in view. We were betrothed when we were four. Mama and Papa now dead, would Haino’s parents honor that vow? Would he even remember me?
People ask me why I spend so many hours grinding pigments and mixing paints, when there are thousands of graphics programs that could make better images faster, without all the muss and fuss. Just call them up in cyberspace and shape your images with pure visualization, if you aren’t into the tactility of a stylus and graphics tablet.
I don’t want to knock those systems, not when so many people have been able to live normal lives in spite of injuries that would’ve been massively disabling a few decades ago. I still remember being allowed to put on goggles and haptic-feedback gloves and go visit Grandma in her virtual space after her stroke. For an eight-year-old girl, it was sure a lot better than going to the nursing home and looking at Grandma’s body being sustained by all those machines. And of course the technology gave our military an edge in the War.
But I keep thinking that we’ve gone too far, too fast with making them available to everybody. We’ve gone from “does this person need it” to “why shouldn’t this person have it” without really considering the consequences of and entire society of able-bodied people abandoning physical interaction to live primarily in virtual spaces. So I’m choosing to keep the old skills alive, and enjoy the old experiences.
Navig8r says: That’s Carmelita. I like her. She’s nice to me, unlike her bratty brothers. I wish I could tell her so, but I’m a donkey. I think she understands anyway, though. My pack saddle is heavy today. The upper pastures are green, if only briefly in this dry climate, so the cans are full of milk from Olga the cow. The chickens are laying too, so there is a crate of eggs. Her parents have discovered that a lot more stuff makes it to the market in the village under Carmelita’s care than her brothers’, so down the trail we go.
5 Comments