My sister and I were gone last week to the great redwood forests of San Mateo County. I fell madly, truly, deeply in love with my morning and evening walks on the various beaches around Pescadero. I went out for solitary painting expeditions with my gouache palette, pulling over at various places to draw and paint what I saw.
A friend lent me her cozy cabin tucked into a redwood canyon for the week. It was marvelous and I was able to experience a new part of California previously undiscovered. Instead of driving to Chinatown in rush hour LA traffic at 7 a.m. I headed out of the canyon, down country lanes, to wild lonely beaches with few Homo sapiens. My favorite kind! Nothing but bird tracks, sea stacks, and golden cliffs to walk beside.
…our job always and forever was to refuse Apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.
My path forward has not become illuminated with retirement insight, but I have managed to shake off an unsettling feeling of vastness, of being unmoored, of coming undone. I am finding my way through uncharted territory. I signed up for 4 classes a week of water exercises at a large outdoor aquatic center nearby. They’ll begin next week and continue through our hottest month of September.
I seem to have returned to my former carelessly lazy ways in regard to homemaking, but I do have my Swiffer dusters at the ready should the need to tidy strike. My personality does not lend itself to schedules, but I make many more TO DON’T lists on the pages of my journal than I used to and I confess to enjoying checking them off.
A couple of former students emailed me and I enjoyed reading and responding to their missives.
The best futures are unforeseen.
All quotes in this post are courtesy of Leif Enger.
This week as part of my art practice I intend to recreate the rough gouache sketches I made in San Mateo County on loose sheets of heavier paper. I need to order some more acrylic gouache and look forward to getting a lightweight folding stool I can take with me for outdoor sketching both here in LA and further afield. If you know of a good one let me know! I look forward to more drawing from life expeditions.
As I fell asleep each night in my cabin bed, I turned my head back to the window above my pillow, towards the redwood canopy and without fail found a black sky shivering with stars.
On My Bookshelf
I am keeping my branch of the Los Angeles Public Library busy with my requests. And as each title arrives I enjoy the winding path of words into story after story. For years and years it took me weeks to finish books, but now I assign myself 50 pages a day and in that way finish most books in under a week. Reading: another of my new jobs in retirement. I found most of these titles on a Book Tok where I follow several readers with the same taste as I. Lately I carry my books to a lovely nearby park and settle under a bench with deep pockets of shade. I always note the time. Is it recess or lunch? Almost time for Math/P.E./Writer’s Workshop! But under my reading trees I have no need to hurry or report back to duty.
I can wholeheartedly vouch for the Enger, O’Farrell, and Kamali (LWOT) books as being of unputdownable status. The others are in process, or not begun yet.
I Cheerfully Refuse gets special mention for being a tome for our time with good instruction for how to proceed with present jackass fascists in the WH. Plus, the boat Flower, is a character worthy of many accolades.
As always, I love hearing from you and knowing what sort of things you’re getting up to in your corners of the world. What are you cooking, reading, making, thinking? A curious retiree in the city of angels wants to know.
Keep your head above the waves. We owe it to the world to stay hopeful and not fall into a thick soup of despair.
See you, love you, bye.
