A little November chill

Good morning.  It's early, I know...dark still here, with the moon a bright-white (nearly) round companion in the western sky. 

It's cold, too...31 F, promised to dip to 29 in the next hour or so.  Fleece jacket and wool socks on, I walked out into the clear air to pull the trash bin out for pickup and gather mail, and stopped for a few minutes, enjoying dark, cold, moon.  In a little while, when it's lighter, I think I will get out again to walk.  My favorite times to wander out this month have been at twilight, but this morning, dawn entices me.

This is Thanksgiving week, the children home from school for their fall break and the holiday, so it's quiet, no early busses' yellow rumble.  One or two of the families on the street have left already for visits to relatives, but most of us remain in situ, planning holiday gatherings in small, familiar numbers.  I, who happily used to gather tables full of celebrants, have come to like the gatherings of half a dozen inside.

Inside on ordinary days, the tasks draw winterish...sewing to knitting, garden work to kitchen work, reading and movies to...more reading and movies.  Music tunes-in more contemplative, less jazzy.  The Farmer's Market sprouts greens, thick-skinned vine crops and crafts, fewer delicate fruits.  Summer herbs move to warmer interiors.

There's more regular time for art, too, thanks to a weekly visit from Josephine, who paints with me for a few hours.  Though she's the younger, I watch her precise drawing (she likes to invent new dresses for characters from  shows) and her slashes of color that grow into organic abstracts.  When two of us paint, each in our different ways, we open new vistas to each other.

Josephine, painting 1

Yesterday, for instance, she watched me tapping my brush over the collage I was working on to make tiny gold splatters.  "How do you do that?" she asked, and suddenly her painting was splendid with silver and red fireworks.  In turn, those same impulsive strokes inspire me to be wilder, too.

Josephine, painting 2

Talking while we work, we manage to shift our left brains to right, distracting our hands from depending too much on the conscious.  It reminds me of one of my best art teachers here in town, Betty Bell (talk about an artist who reveled in color!), who would move around behind us, chatting away about anything but art...rumors, travel stories, romantic disappointments...to which we listened while our hands and eyes went their surreptitious way.  Now and then she would stop and point to what we were doing...."Look!  That's just like the stone wall in Florence...maybe just bring your strokes out a little to shade."  or "Now how did you get those wonderful greens?  If you flipped lines here and there..."  At the end of class, we'd look across the room at the work we'd created, hardly recognizing the promise she'd hinted at, which, often unwittingly, had come true.  I miss her.

Betty Bell, Gathering by the Water

Thinking of that freedom of hand and eye is like this morning's clear bright cold, being out in the first air, reft of any busy-ness, open to possibility...

 ...my Thanksgiving wish for you all.