On the brink of the autumn equinox

I keep wondering about time, specifically my experience of time during this time. How inside and outside of time it feels right now.  Today, I feel like I am on an extended residency with all the freedom of time and all the internal pressure to do something with it.

​Yesterday, writing was easy. But not today, so I made myself a water color sample chart to remember what each color in my new 24 half pan set looks like before being blended.  I took a virtual class in late August and made a really tight mess of water color Allen's hummingbird. I took the class to just mess around, be free, have some fun, and use a different part of my brain but I froze. So, last week I bought a Sennelier La Petit Aquarelle 24 half pan set and Canson XL water color paper. I don't know where all this leads but it makes me feel like there is a future I am swimming to. Or at the very least another virtual painting class this Saturday night.

In the meantime I am reading about big swathes of time.  I just finished, The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World  by Steve Brusatte.  It was one of those ebooks that was $2.99 and I was not sure why I was drawn to it. However, I have learned that when I am drawn to a book there is something I need to experience. And it was so interesting; the door is not shut on the dinosaur discovery.  It was honestly one of the better books I've read during this pandemic. 

Now I've started,  A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, by Adam Rutherford.   So far it is captivating.

Time and change are big players in both books. Both remind me that our species (Americans in particular) lacks patience with the unknown and change.

And we are certainly neck deep right now in the unknown.  And because of that, and in the midst of all the fires here in California, I started reading The Wisdom of No Escape, by Pema Chodron, an American Tibetan Buddhist nun and teacher.  

Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.” Pema Chodron

Reading really feeds writing so with the combination of these three books I'll see what comes forward.