The morning river walk in a steady mist offered this view of a vine just hanging there looking like a story needed telling and then a cheerful note as I walked back to the car.
I went by the coffee shop to get a takeaway coffee but they were closed due to it being a holiday. Being alone I have lost track of holidays, days seem to just run into each other and I lose some of them.
Later after finishing my drawing I took these pictures out the windows.
I feel so distant from my home now. I have done all the clinical work of drawing the new house plan to scale, measuring every piece of furniture and fitting it into that plan. There is no sadness when I think of leaving here. Those emotions went when Lee was settled into a care home. This house was our last big project together and I was going to leave the documentation of that building process via my journal to the new owners. But I decided against that. They would likely only be interested in the cost of our appliances sixteen years ago and miss the subtext of two people building their dream house with every intention of living the rest of their lives in this one place.
There are other books about this house I will take with me like this one using earth pigments from my yard to watercolor the white line prints of my yard, titled Home Colors.
And another wood block story of my front yard.
I loved figuring out how to make 3D images for each section and then having them fold onto each other to close the book/story.
These and all my books will go with me and be kept where I can reach out and touch them whenever I need to remember being here with Lee. It is hard some days to pack his things away. Here is the last rock he brought into the house…a small red one after trying for several days to bring in big ones to start one of his lines of rocks in the house. I said it was lovely and we should save it here. I have not been able to move it yet.
It sits atop a rock a friend sent from Alaska and that one sits on one a friend brought back with others from New York for me to roll shifu threads on. Next to it is a rock my dear friend from graduate school gave me from her home in Canada. All these rocks will go with me plus those in a snake form in the yard near the large Japanese stone lantern (also going) and all those lovely round ones my daughter and her partner brought down for me to hold and move about just a couple of months ago.
Thinking of Lee today I went to our bedroom and pulled three things from his wooden bowl of things dropped in. One of those emptying pockets wood bowls that he turned in his shop. A pair of reading glasses, a bottle opener and a pocket watch I cannot open. It is a nice page I think.
I added scraps of cloth to the page. Tomorrow I will find something on my walk to draw next. I might just pour an early glass of wine and start another short story. It is that kind of day…..
Til later…