Rain in the desert...

We woke up to a lovely soft rain at 5am this morning... I find it fascinating to live in the desert and realize how nature adjusts to it's lack of water. It's all about conservation. The cardones, choyas, torotes and all the other native plants turn brown, almost lifeless. However in the summer, when we get our few days of rain everything changes, the desert turns green, beautifully green. Each of those plants then, holds it water for many months in order to survive. There is no waste.

The air is thick...

You wake up in the morning, you open the door and go outside. The air is thick, so thick that you feel a certain shortness of breath. Nothing moves, there is no breeze, everything is still. It almost feels like there is a layer between you and the rest of the world. You try to focus but it is like looking through a foggy lens.

Sometimes we walk together and sometimes we walk apart...

August came and went, and somehow I was unable to get too close to the computer. This month brought forth a wedding anniversary of 37 years. I was thinking how many trails, paths and highways we have driven, how many creeks, lakes and oceans we have paddled and how many walks we have taken together. Como dice Simone de Beauvoir en su libro "La Mujer Rota", solíamos mirar lejos y actuar sobre lo mirado. Hoy vivímos al día, y muchas veces caminamos solos, o a diferente paso. It's Ok to walk together and sometimes to walk apart.

My studio gets a roof....

After three years of working au plain air I decided to go indoors. Although it brought a certain amount of excitement to my work sessions there were other conditions that far outweighed the pros. The constant wind, while trying to position thin japanese or handmade papers was to say the least challenging. The constant bug patrol buzzing around my head and my wax container distracting, and having to set up every morning and put everything away at nights exhausting. So I am thankfully delighted and very excited to think I will soon be having an enclosed beautiful space to work in, and still have plenty of light and the ocean in my viewfinder.

I have been pondering on one of Virginia Woolf's lines "You cannot find peace by avoiding life".

Plenitud y Armonía...

Acabo de leer otro libro de Sandor Marai, este llamado La Amante de Bolzano. Y ésta frase me ha hecho pensar... "la vida es cuando un hombre y una mujer están hechos el uno para el otro, porque tienen que ver el uno con el otro, como la lluvia que cae sobre el mar y vuelve a renacer con el, creándose y recreándose mutuamente y siendo el uno condición del otro.. y esa plenitud crea algo, crea la armonía y esa armonía es la vida.

Que pasa cuando el espíritu se pierde...

Durante nuestra visita a Cuba, pasaron muchas cosas por mi mente y por mi corazón. Primeramente ví en la Habana, una ciudad bella sin reparo. Sin embargo habitada por un pueblo caribeño que se distinguió siempre por su gran espíritu libre, su alegría, su amor a la música y a la vida. Más ahora me queda claro que la historia a llevado su cause y ha robado el espîritu libre de su pueblo. La estructura está ahí, la gente está ahí, así como sus edificios aunque faltos de un poco de pintura, pero ahí están todavía siendo testigos a los estragos del tiempo. Todo esto me produjo un extraño vacío.