Simple Pleasures

• spying a bright pop of winterberry (Ilex verticillata) color against monochromatic wetlands on my way home from the gym
• laughing out loud when the last of eleven November poster calendars I'd affixed to the family room walls as seasonal decoration fell to the floor because the masking tape had no sticking power
• feeling my just-sharpened chef's knife chop through bok choy at lunch time
• spreading black gesso onto card stock with a brush

Out of the Early Morning Darkness
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic and collage on card stock
abstract
2019

November 12

November 12

     4:30 a.m.


     On mornings like this, as hours before dawn
     I walk the dark hall of the road
     with my life creaking under my feet, I sometimes
     take hold of the cold porcelain knob
     of the moon, and turn it, and step into a room
     warm and yellow, and take my seat
     at a small wooden table with a border of painted pansies,
     and wait for my mother to bring me my bowl.

                             —Ted Kooser, Winter Morning Walks

Save Room for Dancing
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, pencil, collage, and oil pastel on card stock*
abstract
2019

* card stock = table number placard from Scott & Alisa's wedding reception

An Afternoon in November

contentment,
ease,
effortlessness and
experimental energy
today—
open heart,
open mind,
unfettered partnership
of hand
and muse

A System Joyously Disarranged Past All Reassembly
3.5 x 5" postcard; collage, pencil, ink, acrylic, and oil pastel on card stock
abstract
2019

Reckless Conditions

… the point is
that not only does time fly
and do we die,
but also
that in these reckless conditions
we live at all,
and are vouchsafed,
for the duration 
  of certain inexplicable moments,
to know it.
                               —Annie Dillard,
                          Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Vouchsafed
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic and ink on cardstock
abstract landscape
2019

This Is It

This is it, I think, 
this is it, 
right now, 
the present, 
this empty gas station, here, 
this western wind,
this tang of coffee on the tongue, 
and I am patting the puppy, 
I am watching the mountain.
                         —Annie Dillard,
              Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

This Is It, I Think
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, ink, collage, and pastel on card stock
abstract
2019