tonight

right now i can see a fat fat robin outside my front window, popping along with a juicy worm in his beak.  i think i might have chased the same one away from my one and only red strawberry on my one and only strawberry plant today.  too late however.  that worm will now join my strawberry in robin gullet gore. 
thankfully, strawberries are on sale at my local sobeys. who can complain?  come on over fat robin, enjoy yourself.

it is now the month of June, which means the month of May, with it's many scribbles and lists and arrows and exclamation marks, has been replaced by this blissfully sparse calender month.  no, not empty.  there is something large at the bottom, looming and beckoning at the same time:  my show. 

i've been thinking alot this week about how crazy it is that i am an artist.  i haven't really let myself hold the title until recently, but i think it's okay to say now.  i think there's enough sales under my belt, enough paintings with my signature elsewhere in the world.  how is it that i get paid to move colour around cloth?  it's so....excessive.  so unnecessary.  and yet, so fundamental and essential as well.  i actually get to create something, to transform the ordinary into (hopefully) extraordinary, and in the process i can, at the best of moments, encourage, enlighten, enchant another.  was art created for this purpose?  to speak to a deep part in another that responds to this communication alone?   and if it were taken away, truly, completely...could one survive a life bereft of any beauty?  would this be hell?

but, philosophising aside, it remains colour on cloth, and blows my mind that it is my profession.
true, there are many times, such as now, when my back aches for relief and my arm threatens tendinitis, and i doubt that my eyes can see colour any longer - when this artistry feels very much like work.  but after the suffering, if i'm really lucky, i have this moment of surprise:
 'did i just do that?'.

when i really boil it down, this art in me is sheer
                                                                           
                                                                                gift.

tonight my little girl of eight told me that she let her crush know that he is, indeed, her crush.  i asked "what did you say" and she answered "i told him a liked him." and i asked "how?" and she said "i whispered it in his ear".  and then she gave this delightful little giggle, and my heart flipped. 

it is a beautiful world tonight, of fat robins and artistic endeavor and a giggly bright-eyed girl.