life of a georgia Artist

Autumn Season  The leaves are changing into vibrant rays of sunshine in reds, oranges, and yellows. The ground is carpeted with fallen leaves and the temperature is dropping. This is my favorite season. I love to sit under any tree as the wind blows and leaves fall all over me. It brings me joy. This is the season of coziness. As the temperature drops, the blankets are rewashed and brought out, and laid about the house for all to grab and use as needed. Candles are light again, lights are left off, and the earlier night darkness seeps into all the corners of our lives. Fall with its crisp air, its apple picking season, its hayrides, and corn mazes. Its birds flying south, its mornings spent listening to the owls hoot as they say a quick early good morning and then go off to sleep. It is a wind blowing by carrying leaves that had fallen. It is the crunch under your feet.  This is the season to travel. To chase colors across the state. To find the perfect fall spot to take photos, to cap

  Fall is attempting to push summer to its demise. And yet here we are in Georgia in the 90s daily.  And with a nasty viral something, a nasty cold, or whatever the baby felt like sharing, snotting on me. Fighting it off for four days now. Broke dishes, I'm not banned from using breakable containers. Also, I am banned from soup, which went well. Another thing, making a pitcher of cherry-flavored water, which went all over the entire fridge. It filled in every nook and cranny.  When I am sick I am a clutz. I have banned myself from driving today as well so all other humans remain alive. This cold has me down. It is not covid, just another viral thing floating around. My daughter, granddaughter, and I all have it.  With this said, I want to double back to another post. The one about hearing. I have been writing in my journal each morning, and I pay attention to the world now and how it wakes up. My listening path would make Julia Cameron proud. The phone sits idle. A candle is lit. S

                                                         Photo by Tomas Anton Escobar on Unsplash There was a book I read  awhile ago that said to listen. I believe it was by Julia Cameron. I have read the Artist Way and liked it but, her book  Seeking Wisdom  was the book that stuck with me. She is a brilliant writer and her words opened my ears. I started writing down what I heard first thing in the morning, I left my phone untouched.  The cat helps because he  loves the window open first thing in the morning, It has cooled a tiny bit at 6AM in Georgia  First, I make sure he has food and water, then I make my coffee and sit down to listen. He just sits quietly in the open window waiting to tell any bird, squirrel, or lord forbid a cat walks into his backyard, he will tell it off quickly and loudly. Most mornings though he sits and listens. I sit and listen. You can hear the early morning train clackety clacking down the tracks. You can hear the birds quietly waking up and starting t

 This past weekend was DragonCon in Atl. This building with these trees outside always reminds me of the book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It's a sad book about poverty, despair, and life and how living in poverty is sometimes all you can see. Atlanta does not have a lot of trees in the city part, but these two remind me of the tree that grows in Brooklyn in the book. A sign of hope in a concrete jungle.  Read it if you haven't. It is truly humbling. When I came around the corner I always gasped in glee. My tree that grows in Atl is still there. I cannot explain it but when we go to DragonCon seeing these trees is my highlight. Trees and nature have a way of surviving even when we build over them, even when it struggles and breaks through the sidewalk, trees grow, flowers bloom, and nature perseveres. I see this as a metaphor for life. We work, we bend, we grow, and we are survivors. We push through so much in this world. Hunger, poverty, jobs, divorces, miscarriages, babies, hap