For the most part, the change has still been almost imperceptible, but it is there. It’s a fire are brushed across masses of green, there are just enough splashes of gold and orange, however, to warn that the changing of the guard is on the way.
Here in Vermont, that’s the sign to get the firewood stacked and the studs in the tires. It’s the time to get ready to bundle up and hunker down, and I have yet to meet a single Vermonter, who isn’t secretly giddy at the prospect.
Old Lady Katie is in her 80s, in dog years, and like the middle-aged ladyshe follows around, she has to visit the necessary room a little more frequently these days. Katie’s necessary room is the great outdoors, and, because she has the world’s worst recall once the sun goes down, I always take her out on a leash for her last potty break.
The late night leash visits, give me a chance to enjoy the great outdoors in all kinds of weather, sometimes when we have visitors of the giant, furry kind near the composter, and, as happened last night, when the yard in the forest and Mountains beyond, are under the spell of moonlight.
Last night, the moon was gold, almost orange, forecasting, the change in seasons that is almost upon us. It will be our last autumn in Vermont before we move, and in that five minutes, I was reminded that there will be some magic from this place that we will miss. Sometimes, though, a little bit of bitter makes the sweet more special.
I don’t know why, but whenever I start packing all of my watercolor kits, I feel like I am going through a secret stash of something illicit. To be fair, paint pans are every bit as mood altering and addictive as any pill or powder. But at least, with a watercolor, I find myself drinking more water – – even if it is a bit a rainbow colored. 
If you were to tell me that there was anything more mesmerizing than watching rain move across water — watching the sky bend down to become one with the world – I would beg you to come and sit by the lake or ocean with me, and let yourself exist in a moment of utter peace with the clouds and waves.
We took the train to get to our vacation place in Southwestern Michigan, and, being a one backpack packer, I figured out pretty quickly that bringing even my pretty portable plein air oil kit was not going to be a small undertaking (with the emphasis on undertaking).
My watercolors and watercolor journal, which haven’t made an appearance in ages, fit into a nice little pencil pouch. They have been my constant companion for the last few days, proving, once again, that old friends are miracles into themselves.
Being easy to set up and clean up, they’ve made it easy to focus on the the birds and bees and the weeds.
And in those moments of focus, of meditation, the weeds become blossoms. 
I should walk a mile or two.
I could swim half of that.
Oh, What to do?
‘Tis this towel that makes my butt look fat,
So I should move, but oh boo-hoo.
Just one last sketch once I fix my hat.
It’s not time to hibernate, but it’s the latter half of summer, and this mama bear needed some time to slow down. A slow day of watching kids get up when they needed to get up, people get breakfast when they were ready. A slow day of painting from morning till noon. And just like that, there is a rumble of energy building again.
Sometimes, to get the important parts of your life back, you need to get back to the people and places that have mattered most to you.
You need to forget about doing things the right way or making anything “good” and just embrace being in the moment, so that in those moments with the people and places that matter, peace will finally find you again.
For ages I’ve wrestled with the ethics of painting with a medium that requires the purchase of little plastic tubes of pigment that will ultimately end up in a landfill. My neurodivergent brain perseverates on the idea that all these creations will end up at a garage sale, and then the landfill. Does the world really need more pretty pictures of landscapes?
I know when we move to a city next year, I will paint the things that I find beautiful there and I wonder again, does the world need more pretty pictures?
As election season gets uglier, however, I realize the answer to that is a resounding yes!
I paint the landscape Vermont, because it is increasingly developed and less wild, and I want to share a beauty that I think is worth protecting. When we go to the city I’m always drawn to parks, filled with people from different walks of life, and I don’t want to get better at painting people. That expression of community is also rare and precious.
As I was standing in a field, trying to remember how to paint (not quite there yet), I was able to remember exactly why I need to meet these things. When I’m standing there, I feel like the little mermaid if she was middle aged and fat and still wanting to be part of those precious parts of the world.
So there won’t be anything profound or deep. There’ll just be more pretty pictures (I hope), but I think it’s actually maybe, just maybe what we do need.
When you go about rediscovering the world in middle age, you don’t feel like an adult — confident about what you know and comfortable with the things you don’t know. Suddenly, you know nothing.
I have joked to my husband that, for the last two weeks, I’ve felt a bit like Milton Wadams from Office Space, shuffling and mumbling as I reprocess each sensation and landscape — gravel under the feet, the plaintive sound of an orange cat needing to be petted just so, dishes arriving at the dentist.
Now, I’m actually learning to embrace the shuffling and robotic processing of sensory input. Rather than being a malcontented, midlife crisis, I’m trying to experience the world as if I were a child again.
My only source of malcontent has been how difficult painting has become difficult this week. The sensors still seem disconnected from output. Partly out of desperation (knowing that non-writing/drawing artist is a monster courting disaster) my post-labyrinthectomy journey of discovery seems to be bringing me back to my blog – my original writing and drawing diary.
Now, as I am watching every little detail around me, I mentally record the mundane and magical moments around our yard like a robot, searching, not for artificial intelligence, but authentic interaction with the world. This voyage of discovery will undoubtedly reroute my journey of creation.
When I was first diagnosed with Ménière’s disease three years ago, I was told that it was a disability that automatically disqualified you from multiple professions. Two years ago, I was told to stop using stairs taking public transportation by myself because likely and actual unpredictable “drop attacks.” I was told the disease would end when I lost my hearing in the affected air.
Last week, when I give up the hearing to prevent any more false, it would’ve been easy to see the change as a loss, as acquiring more disability.
Instead, the opposite is happening. It may take some time to be able to drive again, and the shuffling will probably persist for a while. That’s OK because the shuffling is part of rediscovery, and that will lead to a whole new chapter of creativity.
High Summer, Oil on Canvas, 20” x 20”
It is only recently that I realized that the practice of finding my voice was less about settling on a genre and more about continued exploration and experimentation. It is why the abstract and the concrete are mutually inclusive for me.
My paintbrushes were still for most of the break, and that could have made me cranky. This holiday, however, creativity showed up in unexpected ways.
Two days before Christmas, Covid forced a sudden reconfiguration of our family gathering, turning our house into holiday central for my parents. Having hosted off and on for almost 30 years now, planning holiday menus is still fun but hardly an adventure into the unknown.
And then Thing1, our newly-minted adult, and Thing2 gave it a creative twist. Avid cooks, they asked if they could take charge of the main courses.
I’m no dummy so of course I said be my guest (the forgotten Achilles’ heel in my plan was that neither of them is an avid dishwasher). Turning them loose on the main course menu, meant reconfiguring side dishes, and suddenly planning a holiday meal was an adventure again.
I thought the rest of the break would be in the studio, but my sister, having been cheated by Covid out of a family gathering, invited us to Connecticut for the next weekend. I am as outgoing as a slug in the winter, living under the electric blanket until the cats wake us up to be fed, but knew we should go.
It turned another lesson in the value of letting fate run things.
Each of us running half an empty nest, my sister and I found our families creating new traditions as adult siblings without our parents. The pay off was a reminder that sometimes the family you choose is the family you grew up with, but the weekend had just begun.
We used the trip to catch up with the Big Guy’s sister and our other adult nephew at his music production studio in the same town. It was a chance for Thing2, an increasingly serious musician, to a few hours as a studio musician while the adults caught up over coffee.
Thing2 rarely lets me videotape his playing. All my brag videos are concert bootlegs and snippets of impromptu shows, but suddenly we were blessed with hours of unguarded music.
I hadn’t painted a drop in weeks, but creativity had permeated every minute from all directions. And therein lay a lesson that I recognized only as I was walking to my car after work the day after break, energized and ready to return to my studio.
Sometimes finding your creativity as much about the feeding of your soul, as it is in the exercising of an idea.
Picking My Battles 