“Whatever you’re disappointed in can be upgraded by lowering your level of satisfaction.”
Without fail that is what I told my students who were forever complaining about the outcomes of their efforts in class. Most of the time it had to do with skills not yet mastered.
Improving one’s skill level takes time….lots of time….and effort that week-long workshops on personal expression did not have sufficient time to master once a commitment had been made. So, let’s say a student with no book making experience wanted to make a book to record visual ideas for a series of work. There is no time to teach them how to make a perfect book, but there is time to get them to understand that progressive sheets of paper held together by any means necessary, say, stitch, staples, glue, etc., is exactly what is “good enough” to get on with recording ideas.
As I age and watch my own skills succumb to accumulating limitations, I am happy to truly believe in the merits of lowering my level of satisfaction. My former skills in drawing are not going to suddenly reappear. If it is just a graphite pencil, there is always the eraser to help. But light pencil sketches to lay in unforgiving water colors is another matter. Remember the six-way opening book? First a section on wildflowers.
Then 72 pages of butterflies in the next section…
Then on to a section of just leaves.
And I keep going with this section…..now as of this morning up to page 44 of the 72 in this section…..and I am beginning to see a bit of decline in acuity.
But here is the good part. I love trying to get the leaves onto a page. And I always find something good about each one. Not least of which is that I did it! There is still one more narrow section to fill with 72 images of something and then the two full square sections (one of which has been committed to nests and eggs and probably feathers. I am determined to fill this entire book of pre-gessoed pages that began as a promise to myself to fill with Nature images.
The weather is hot and humid. Both those physical conditions paired with the total desperate insanity of leadership in our slowly tanking country keep me mostly hunkered down here at home in my sketchbooks and writing. I wrote about the weather and myself in this latest poem.
My View S. Webster
It’s raining
Again.
Hard, heavy, wet.
Much like buckets
being emptied
just outside
my window.
Until the sun says,
“Stop!”
And forces the water
underground
or into rising steam.
Then
just as the sun
claims victory,
clouds conspire
to fill
their buckets.
Plans are
altered by
disappointment
to all but
those of us
inside,
looking out,
and trusting
nothing.
Friday night a friend took me to dinner and we started with double servings of Tom Collins cocktails. The dehydrated orange slices add nothing to the drink but a pleasing appearance. Cut wedge or peel would have done more for these very sweet drinks.
The view needed no improvements.
So that is it for now. I need to get on toward my step goal for the day and try to get a balance/confidence workout in before stopping for the day with a scotch and slow trip of memories.
Til later…..