Supply

 (Continuing – from February 19 posting – EXERCISE: START HERE)

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. ~Dorothea Lange

The Poppy photograph, so well framed and square and hung plum as God's own first horizon, rested silently on the wall beyond its veil.

The night was an amalgam of dreams about horses and bonfires and not being able to find a raincoat and he suffered a fitful stirring and not too few wretched trips to the toilet and Zoe complaining about the bathroom light at 4 AM.

Down to the nub of a pencil, he wrote in the spiral notebook and he did remember scratching down this quote just before falling off for a few decent and restorative hours of sleep.

If we've never experienced human love to the point of

sacrifice, surrender, forgiveness, generosity… it will be

very hard for us to access, imagine or even experience

God's kind of love. Conversely, if we have never let God

love us in the deep and subtle ways that God does,

we will not know how to love another human in the deepest

ways of which we are capable. ~Father Richard Rohr

In the morning he took himself to an art supply store with no plan and nothing to think about creating or constructing, just the hunger he woke with to have a free day and go get some stuff to play with. He walked like a prayer up and down the halls of Third Avenue Art Supply whistling Last Dance with Mary Jane wishing he would have had a chance to see Tom Petty before he croaked. It would've been an amazing concert.

He and Perkins should've gone and sat five or six rows back like they did for The Stones at Alpine Valley.

The apartment was a two bedroom and so one room was just for his artwork and to do yoga or take a nap and center down in a different space to keep from feeling cooped up, especially during the winter months. It was real simple, Fenshwe. He had an easel and a worktable for assembling sculpture or clay models, doing mixed media with found objects anywhere from driftwood to candy wrappers.

Sleeping in and making an omelette and strolling the aisles of the Third Avenue Art Supply took absolutely no energy or stress. He played with word puzzles, memorizing lines from the morning's meditations… Letting everything flow as integrated… Taking that sacred stroll, skating along on all four wheels of his cart.

Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned –

Sidewalk chalk half off for a huge bucket, yes please. Thank you, yes.

even, and especially, when things go wrong.

Love allows and accommodates everything in

Pastels, pastels… Charcoal, pencils… The last sketch in his spiral-bound notebook was of the teepee and he was remembering now his desire to do some more sketching and then work from there toward characterization in the pros. Along with music he was a refiner of many and various casseroles and orchestral perfections as one would add wine to a sturdy bohemian meal.

human experience, both the good and the bad, and

nothing else can really do this. Nothing. ~Father Richard Rohr

Just then he saw it. Yep, no question about it, Alan, one of his most popular Uber riders, the one who would talk your ear straight off for half an hour before taking a breath, wore a large Sox hat, one of the throwback kind from the 70s and he saw it flashed before his eyes before he could stop and turn the other way.

Still, by some small miracle Alan had not connected and did not recognize who he was as yet, so he quickly turned around and poked his nose into a magazine and slowly walked away.

By some small grace the magazine he chose was filled with the photography of Dorothea Lange. All the shades of gray and sorrow and solidarity she captured… She was working with charcoal and doing sketching in a very different way… The camera, she said, is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

The air in town had snapped back nearly to frozen after the rains came, there were flurries in the air.

Later in the day, in the leather chair with Zoe, he thought about writing a letter to the editorial staff of the Journal.

Having slept in so late he was up again until nearly midnight even though the early route was looming. Oh well, Sundays are sweet and too soon passing.