It was warm at dawn, a real peninsula summer's day. The flowers opened early, drooping as the full heat of the day made the air shimmer. While the sun traced a blazing arc overhead birds twittered and hopped from branch to branch in the cool of the grey-green eucalyptus trees. I watered the plants, swept up the night's bounty of fat, creamy, fallen magnolia petals, weeded, cut back the thick carpet of white alyssum, and contemplated possible rearrangements of plants. I drank a cup of coffee while Natasha sat at my feet, a silent companion blinking huge green eyes in the bright light. The sun turned my skin golden, scattering tiny freckles, leaving behind the summer's kiss that keeps me rosy and warm long after the last rays fade behind the oaks to the west.
I was thinking about how I no longer express myself much artistically. I don't draw, or write fiction, or sing, or make collages, or any of the dozens of pursuits I used to love. I don't know why I gave them up. But then I think about my recent interest in gardening, and my five years of learning photography, and I decide I'm not losing my creativity, I'm just interested in different ways of expressing it. Drawing is fun, but I like messing around with Photoshop just as much. Singing is wonderful, but I prefer to do it privately, no longer having a taste for performing. My web page is basically a collage. I like writing personal journalism better than fiction these days. And while gardening sometimes seems like nothing but weeding, writing involves a fair amount of weeding as well, and I sometimes come to a new perspective on the whole project by concentrating on the details after the larger shape is set in place. So I've decided I'm not losing touch with my artistic self after all.
It's all so much quieter than it used to be, here in my head. I yearned for this when I was younger. Now that I have it, I am suspicious of it from time to time. There's no reason to be, though. It's only the results of living long enough to have a grip on what matters to me. Not caring as much about what people think. Not needing validation of my tastes. Seeing only people whom I genuinely like. No wonder the level of static has dropped. I admire people who come to this sense of balance at a younger age. Me, I'm just happy I got here at all, happy to be someone who finds a world of contentment in the scents and colors of a perfect June day.
The Index
Next Incarnation