December 8, 2015 – Are you in it for the long haul?

I’m being faithful to the process of this painting and the rhythm of my life – not much progress and I WILL finish it!

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I have a relatively new dear friend. She and her family live on the next street over. Bo and I walk by their house, when we go up the hill for our hikes most days. She’s smart and awake and real, and we automatically became friends. She has a sweet (little) dog too. and sometimes our schedules meet so we can hike with our pups together. Last Friday was one of those days. She is a savvy businessperson who loves marketing. I have this drive to expand the impact of my work, so on Friday I was happily lapping up her advice and suggestions – until she suggested creating an event, a class, for people who are bored and might want to learn to watercolor.

I found myself getting snagged on the thought of it. It brought to mind the events that are popping up all over, where people go to a restaurant or bar – or wine bar for an evening of painting and drinking. The artist-instructor gives them all a canvas (usually) some paints and an idea to paint from – a seascape, a piece of fruit – basically a template for them to follow. These events seem to be designed for those who have never painted before – giving them a whole new experience. They get to take home a painting, finished in an evening – happy and proud – or at least (hopefully) having had a good time with their friends. It’s been suggested to me more than once, that I see about putting together this kind of event.

As much as it’s a fabulous way to introduce new people to making art and for the artist to find new potential students, it’s not me and I can’t see myself doing this. I am always willing to look at my own resistance – sometimes it’s based in a keep-me-safe-from-too-much-risk kind of fear. But in this case it’s protective in another way. It’s keeping me from going down the wrong track. I’m not that teacher. I don’t make quickie art, I can’t make quickie art, so I can’t teach – or lead – quickie art experiences.

All of this was behind my getting snagged on her idea. She asked me then, what is you? I said I want to teach or rather guide people, who have a hunger to make art. If it’s not a hunger, it is at least a desire. I’m here for those who want to have making art a regular part of their lives, and who share my love of watercolor.

This past summer, I had the experience of being hired to teach someone to paint, who either didn’t have the hunger, or more likely I’m guessing, didn’t have ready access to it. I’m always compelled to provide what’s lacking, so I found myself feeling the need to generate the energy for the art to come out of her. It didn’t work. And from this experience I got that it doesn’t work this way – in general. No teacher, mentor, guide can provide the impetus to do our work. It must come from us. Creativity comes from the un-manifest world through us. And its energy, its fuel is our desire, it’s the “I want to…” that we hear coming out of our mouths.

People who have this hunger are my people. I didn’t set out to lead groups of watercolorists. But doing so, has not only become a major part of my work life, one of the biggest ways I serve the world, but has revealed to me what I do have to offer – the gifts that I’ve been given to share with others. And all of this has come to be, because of the desire in the core group of women who were there at the start. They called me out of my fears. Their desire to take their paintings to another level, created an environment for them (through me) for that to happen. See how powerful the creative force is? It can even change others’ lives!

In the process, they showed me who I am to serve and how. As much as I love leading my color class, I love sharing the information that empowers people, to have more freedom and confidence with color – a mainstay of our work, I’m made for my on-going groups. I am made to accompany people along the often bumpy road to a finished painting. The way that I – and most of the people who paint with me – work, it takes considerable time for our paintings to start to looking like “something.” Along the way inside our heads, are noisy places.

It is for this reason, that I’m hesitant to “demo” painting techniques. For me, it doesn’t work like it did for dear, departed Bob Ross, and his “happy trees” that came out of his brush so automatically. There are stages in my paintings that are awkward and clearly unfinished-looking. To my eye, these parts look like I don’t know what I’m doing – and I worry that people watching will think this too! When I do demonstrate, I talk about how I actually often don’t know what I’m doing, that we all are finding our way through our paintings. My intention – and hope – is that this will normalize the self-doubt and internal chatter for them. If I do what I do, if I paint what I paint while these “noisy” voices echo in my head, then you can too.

In my web wanderings in the past day, I came upon this article about Parker Palmers commencement address at Naropa University. He talks about taking on big jobs worth doing – like spreading love and peace and justice, which means resisting being caught up in our cultural obsession, with effectiveness in terms of short-term results.

“Our heroes take on impossible jobs and stay with them for the long haul because they live by a standard that trumps effectiveness. The name of that standard, I think, is faithfulness — faithfulness to your gifts, faithfulness to your perception of the needs of the world, and faithfulness to offering your gifts to whatever needs are within your reach.”

For me, a life-worth-living means taking this advice. Spreading love, peace and justice are big, impossible jobs in our world full of violence and suffering. But if the gifts we are given include making paintings that beget love, peace and justice – in the form of watercolor paintings, then this is our “impossible job” to take on.

Working on a piece of art, or a making art becoming your life, takes this same faithfulness. It takes faithfulness to stick with and/or come back to work over a period of time – which for some of us is months and months. This isn’t everyone’s way of working, but it’s ours. And if you have this hunger and the faithfulness to follow it, paint! Bring forth the art that is in you! And let me know, if there’s some way I can help you.

With my love,

Cara

PS: I know some of you have requested this help in the form of video recordings from me – instructing you how to paint. The desire to fill these requests is in me. And I’m still sorting out what form that will take. This is my creative challenge. Though it may not appear so, solving this creative problem is in the hopper. Any specific suggestions as to what you want from me (especially given what I’ve shared here, about being more of a guide than a teacher) are heartily welcome. Your desires have power to manifest themselves through me!

December 1, 2015 – Get yourself some “Big Magic”

Lustina – I painted this in part while listening to Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Invention of Wings”

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I love stories and I am compelled to expand my consciousness – which means I love books. But since becoming a watercolorist and artist, I don’t read actual, paper books like I used to. There is a voice in my head that tells me I could always be painting. The rest of life pulls me away from my painting time enough, so sitting to read a book hardly happens – except right before bed, when I get two pages in before falling asleep. It takes me months to finish a book these days. But – there are so many books that I want to read! Since I have the capacity to listen while I paint, I’ve become an audio-book-listener. When I look at certain paintings, I can recall the books I’ve listened to while I painted parts of them:

• “Late Summer Zin” was “The Help”
• “Dazzling” was “The Paris Wife”
• “Lustina” was “The Invention of Wings”
• “Jubilee” was “The Hundred Foot Journey”
• “Eternal” was “I Always Loved You” (about Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas – a wonderful book)
• “Blush” was the first three seasons of “Downton Abbey” – I was just about the last person to fall in love with the series. One evening in December 2013 I binged listened (mostly) while I painted on the glass vase. I had my iPad propped up on the painting and I glanced over now and then to see what was happening. You’d never know by looking at that part of the painting!

Right now I’m still working on the red-pink-orange roses, and last night, started listening to Elizabeth Gilbert read to me her new book called, “Big Magic.” I’m completely hooked. She is, like I am, a student and curious observer of the creative process, and I’m having a twinge of book envy. I am in no way the writer she is (nor should I be – I have been writing just a few years as compared to her whole life). My appreciation is way bigger than my envy though – I’m completely emboldened by her words – and somehow even more so listening to her, as opposed to reading. I love having her tell me all about how she sees creativity, and how she holds the art-making process. My philosophy is exactly hers, which is incredibly affirming. I know she’d applaud what I find myself saying to those of you, who paint with me in our time together.

I read her blockbuster book “Eat, Pray, Love” in 2006 while we were living at my parents, while our house was being remodeled. It, along with Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter,” got me through that stressful time. Not only were we remodeling, but I was Worship Committee Chair, while the pastor of my church at the time was on sabbatical – there were 20 Sundays that year we had to plan for without her, I was writing the church newsletter, I was in a demanding 10-month-long leadership program and I was a relatively new real estate agent, with anxious clients whose house wasn’t selling, as the market had just peaked. After dinner, while the TV was on in another part of the house, I cuddled up in bed and fell into Italy, then India, then Indonesia and her funny-wise writing.

Neither of the books she’s written since have called to me to read, but reading the first part of “Big Magic” got me. The way she talks about creativity, is incredibly energizing to me. And – freeing. Here’s how she is preaching to the choir:

• There aren’t creative people and non-creative people. By virtue of the fact that we exist, we are creative. We are wired to make things.
• We are not geniuses so much as have them. Ancient Romans thought that geniuses were separate entities outside of us that visit upon us – taking all the credit as well as pressure away from us. Yay! Freedom to just make stuff – “good” or… not so “good.”
• She quotes the poet David Whyte with the phrase “the arrogance of belonging” and gives us permission, if we feel we lack it, in doing so gives a whole new spin on “entitlement.”
• There’s no requirement for us to save or even change the world with our work, it’s enough to simply enjoy it. Phew, I can just paint pretty pictures – I don’t have to make any “statement” or push any boundaries with what I paint.
• Ideas are living things separate from us that want to become manifest in the physical world. If we are faithful to our process of creating, they will see that we are serious enough about what we are doing for them to come through us.

And I’m not quite half way through the book.

I’m not sure that this book will revolutionize how I live my creative life – so much of it (so far) is right where I live. But already, I’m emboldened to get on with the idea that came to me last week – to find friendly places for me to leave stacks of calendars with envelopes, for people to mail me a check – on the honor system. I was all excited about the idea, and then hit a snag and doubt has crept in. But, I’m going to take action on this idea today. (There are SO many calendars still for me to find homes for!). If I look at my art as the work of my (external) inspiration, it’s my job to make it and see it into the world, if that’s what is in me to do with it.

It’s also calming down the “ee-gads” going on inside me, in reaction to what I’m doing with this painting above. Out of a conversation with someone, who is looking for a painting for his wife for Christmas, I realized I needed to do something else with the background. The roses partly painted, I’ve stepped back from them and stripped away the dark green and blue background down, to as much bare paper as I can (without destroying it!). And now I’m painting in a fuzzy background. The lower part is coming out ok – though I do need to make the leaves and stems more well-defined. But I wanted to put in some sunlit leaves at the top. What I’m finding, is that the paper really needs to be white, in order for the glow of yellow and yellow green to come through. The stain in the paper wasn’t allowing it to. So, I’m working with opaque paints and even some white gouache. It’s an entirely different deal – white from paint, not paper – just like painters of all other media use. It’s an experiment. I’m not sure it’s going to work and I’m sticking with it. I’m learning how to work with gouache, and I have a fresh appreciation for the way pure watercolor on white paper, portrays luminosity. There is – and will be – plenty of white-paper-luminosity in the roses and in any case, I’m hearing my own words: “it’s just a piece of paper, not my self-worth.”

We’ll see what happens. Maybe by next week I’ll have it done to share with you. I know I’ll have listened to the rest of “Big Magic.”

If you are looking for encouragement or permission to give yourself over to your creative life, or to give yourself to your creative life more, get yourself “Big Magic.” And then – go make stuff!

Love,

Cara

November 24, 2015 – The blessing of painting together

“Susie’s (not my) painting in progress. Amazing, huh?”

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The week before last, in our Thursday group, Susie was asking me about the painting she was working on. It’s this one here, of a bowl of candies. She was wondering whether she’d gotten the nooks and crannies, between the candies in the silver bowl dark enough. She, like just about all of us, works from reference photos, so I said let’s see what the image has to tell us. Her printed photo was very small and somewhat dark, so I picked up her lap top and her painting, and leaned against the wall with both held outwards for her – and everyone else, who spontaneously gathered around – to see. I couldn’t see either her painting or her image, I was just inviting the process of having the reference image, provide the information to answer her question.

As I watched and listened, as they were looking and pointing and noticing and suggesting, I was filled with the most amazing sense of satisfaction, appreciation – and joy. I told them I was having a moment of ecstasy and they immediately got why. It dawned on me that they don’t really need me all that much anymore. This has been happening more frequently – without my being there to hold up their paintings, either. I hear the artists in my groups chiming in with kind, respectful and helpful feedback about how another artist might solve a problem, or where she might take her work.

Learning how to paint, means gaining skills through instruction and lots of practice. Becoming artists takes giving ourselves over to the process – to our own process – as we are practicing these skills. There’s no place to arrive to; we are all consistently in progress along with our paintings. Mastery is a relative term. I’ve recently picked back up a painting that I started on three years ago. It’s really interesting to look at the parts I painted then, and gauge how I have grown. I’ve expanded and refined my ability to see – what’s going on in the image – because of all the time I’ve spent doing just that, on all the paintings since I set it aside. We are never finished! I’m witnessing how this process is being lived, in the artists in our groups on an unconscious level. And as we paint, the voices in our heads are just as noisy and intrusive about what’s happening on our paper, but we take these voices in stride – and just get back to work, to our work – at the level we are each on at the moment.

“I painted the rose on the left 3 years ago and am working on the one above now.”

The community that has been created in each group – and to a certain extent amongst all of the artists who paint with me regularly – self-generates a force field of support and love. When we gather, what happens is special. Or rather, what is made possible is special. It’s safe. No one echoes our damning voices. And there is momentum to help us move on to from one painting to the next – despite all the temptations to not paint – which are relentless, especially this time of year.

I read a blog post by Jennifer Louden, about a month ago. The title of the post really grabbed me. What she had to say in the actual post met me less than I was hungering for, though. But the title was a big contribution to me: “How Making Art Changes Your Life and Why You Can’t Make it for that Reason.” I SO get this! Making art has completely changed my life. And I didn’t learn to paint because I wanted to change my life. I learned to paint because there were paintings in me! But exactly how does it change our lives? This is what I was hoping Jen’s post would illuminate for me. But it didn’t – at least not in the way that meets my very personal sense of this question, so I am having to sort it out for myself.

What we do is hard, it takes shifting the way we normally perceive. It uses other parts of our brains that we don’t commonly use. And for most of us, this isn’t easy! It takes focusing intensely on what’s happening, with color, with the amount of water, with the way the brush works, pressure and angle. And then there’s the whole inner process that I talked about before. Overcoming all of this challenge, to produce a tangible result, does something to us. I hear my mom say all the time that she looks at a painting she’s finished, especially one done some time in the past, and she marvels that it was she who painted it. And then she has a voice that tells her she could never do that again. My mom is one of the most rational and logical people I know, so it’s not surprising to me that she has this experience. Painting requires suspending this way of being – it means looking at shape and shade and color and taking action based on what we’re seeing, not in thinking about the leaf, stem or petal – the “thing” that we’re painting.

When we spend time painting – making the required shift in how we perceive and how we are using our brains – it is like a trip to another dimension. Our paintings “happen” – they come to be – out of being in an altered state. So, of course, when we return to our “normal” state, it can be hard to believe that it was actually us who painted them. In a way it wasn’t. The part of us that is in disbelief, is not the part of us that actually painted our paintings.

It is spending time in this altered state that changes us. Our groups provide a structure to spend time in this state, on a regular basis. And there seems to be another level of impact, because we are in each other’s company. I’m not sure exactly why – something to explore in another post. But, I hear over and over and over, how time in our painting groups is “better than therapy.” Though what happens is not therapy, as it is commonly understood, what happens is therapy. Please know that I’m a big believer of the other kind of therapy. I’ve healed enormously in the presence of my Donna. And I wasn’t able to paint like I do, until I did heal some of the deep hurts that were in the way. Just needed that said too!

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, and we are all about what we are grateful for. Just typing these words plopped me right into my heart, feeling the warmth of what that is for me. I don’t know where to begin – what I’m grateful for feels boundless. And having the privilege of making art central to my life and getting to spend time every week – and month – with these artists is a big hunk of it. You, who have made coming to paint with me part of your life – and what we’ve created together – are the beating-heart of my work-life. How grateful I am for you – your commitment to your art and yourselves and each other – is so profound it’s hard to put into words.

Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving.

Love,

Cara

November 17, 2015 – Paris

Ellen took this of me on our last night in Paris.

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First a note: This took me a long time to write. It felt like there wasn’t anything else I could write about today and be real. And yet, I feared saying something, in some way, that would offend someone. If I did, I ask for your forgiveness. We are all finding our way through.

Friday I was with my mom in her office after the Friday group had all left, when I got a text from Carla, our bookkeeper: “turn on CNN.” There’s no TV in the office, so we went to CNN.com and saw Paris – the staggering violence being unleashed in this city, that holds such a special place for so many of us. I just came back from there – a month and a day earlier. We never were actually in any of the locations that were attacked – we stayed and visited to the south and west, but still. My loved ones told me they’re so glad this didn’t happen when we were there. I am too. Seeing how the violence in Paris has struck people all over the world, being so close to the epicenter, the impact would have hit us so much harder. It would have been an entirely different experience, and we’d likely be traumatized by having been right there. (As well, it could have bonded us in a way that we weren’t otherwise.) And we would have come home.

My thoughts and heart are and were with those directly impacted – those who were killed, injured, and witnessed it directly – and their loved ones. And I’m thinking about my friends – among millions of Parisians – who live there, for whom this is not just a special place, but home – where they sleep, and get groceries, and go to work and take their kids to school. I went to a dinner party my last Saturday there at my friend’s apartment, that was walking-distance to one of the places that was hit. For them, there’s no other place to go home to. One of the women on our trip has an adult granddaughter living there, who went right by one of the restaurants on a moped and was a block away, entering her friend’s apartment when the gunfire started.

Through my horror and grief, I’ve found myself wondering about all of it. What came up first was “why Paris?” Of all the big cities in the west that could have been attacked, why Paris – again? It could be that the French are part of the coalition that is fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq, but there are literally dozens of countries who are supporting military intervention against them. It could be that France is, as I read, “fiercely secular” (see this cartoon in response to #prayforparis) and the French society is founded upon free thought and free speech – some of which has been anti-Muslim. The attackers are religious fanatics whose point-of-view, maybe even their existence, is threatened by all of this. I’m certain there are other, more complex factors involved – France’s treatment of its Muslim immigrant population may be one. I’ve read of more than one young man who became “radicalized” in a French prison. I’m a meaning-seeker, and I have to wonder if there isn’t something – unconscious or not – about the forces of darkness attacking the “City of Light.”

I’m also wondering “who are they and what are they after?” I read about their leader and his life-long, seemingly single-minded dedication to reciting the Koran. But also I read that it was the chaos in the region, that has allowed men with his bleak, doomsday vision to rise to power. A related question I’m asking is “why are young people (mostly men) – even those from the west – joining with this vision?” Is it that there will always be some people who are disposed to align with darkness? What has a young, strong, capable man strap explosives to the middle of his body, to willingly end his own life? What kind of meaning-seeking compels him to do this?

Then I ask “where’s my place? Where do I put all of this?” Even though I love Paris and have people I’m very fond of who live there, I strangely don’t feel personally attacked. I’m touched by those who have reached out to me this weekend, because of my relationship with Paris. On Saturday morning, Joe and I came up to Tahoe – to the cabin we stayed in this summer. We’re here with no intention, other than to rest and just hang out together with our puppy dog.

I love to do jigsaw puzzles. I am a total addict, so I don’t let myself do them very often, or I’d not have a life! But letting myself get completely consumed by a puzzle, is just what this trip is about. When I was packing up to go, I found a puzzle of a Monet painting of water lilies, Joe’s sister had given me one Christmas that I’d never opened. The painting is in the Museé Marmottan Monet – I just saw this painting last month. Oh, perfect. While it snowed all day on Sunday, I matched colors and shapes to put his painting back together. I was intimate with the brush strokes, he laid down on this canvas a hundred years ago. In some way, even if it’s so obvious it’s a cliché – this was the right meditation as I asked these questions. Not a drab color on any of the 1,000 pieces – pinks, blues, greens and whites – of the lily pond in the garden he created in Giverny – we were just there too.

“Yesterday’s hike in the snow”

Yesterday we woke to sun, shining on the snow covering everything. It was boot-deep as we took a hike along one of the paths we take in the summer. It was all new, to see this very familiar place covered with white. I kept exclaiming how beautiful it all was – so much that Joe was rolling his eyes at me. It was very quiet too as the soft snow absorbs sound. Except for one man and his dog coming back just as we were heading out, we saw no one. Bo took to the snow like he’d been in it all his life. He romped, and ran, and sniffed and had a big party. It was all so peaceful.

I’ve not watched the news or followed what’s going on online. Joe has and has given me some of the highlights. Violence has been pledged in retaliation. We have to stop them. It’s not over, there will be more. None of this is particularly helpful to me. I’m finding myself more contemplative and gaining perspective. Violence happens every day, many days in far greater magnitude. We can’t imagine ourselves in a café in Beirut or Baghdad or even Tel Aviv. But we can if the café is in Paris. Even if we’ve not been there, we’ve dreamed of it. So, we feel the impact. Besides that it was Paris, a place that captures the world’s imagination like maybe no other. It’s a symbol of our way of life – much like New York. The terrorists get this.

We’re going to hike again this morning – it’s another spectacularly beautiful day. And then I want to paint. Roses. A painting that I started two or three years ago that has been waiting to be finished. I’d just finished one of the grapes and hadn’t sorted out what to paint next. So, I’ll work on this one. It’s what I do. I paint.

We live in a world that contains violence. And I’m very grateful for those who are called to step up, risking everything, to prevent and mitigate it as much as possible. And I hope in doing so, that the violence isn’t perpetuated. And I believe our world contains even more grace and beauty and love, than it does violence. It is evident – otherwise the forces of darkness would have taken over and life would not exist. Most of the response to the violence in Paris is filled with the forces of life, of light – connecting us to each other. Most of us are drawn to the light, to perpetuate life. It feels like I keep saying this – but I’m finding myself looking for the capacity to hold it all – the bloodshed and the snowfall, the violence and the beauty, the outrage and the compassion, fear and love.

With my love for all of you and for all our world,

Cara

November 10, 2015 – Friendship

Brenda and me in the mid 90’s

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I spent several hours on Saturday with my dear friend Brenda. We started our time together over the phone squabbling. It struck me that this was the sign of a really deep, long-standing friendship. It was silly – and pointless – who said what about when and where we’d meet. But, when we got together, it was as if it hadn’t happened. We were just so glad to be together and share the new calendar (yes, they’re here!). Over lunch I found myself deeply appreciating this beautiful woman, who has been my close friend since the 1980’s.

We became good friends because of a phone number! She managed the branch of Personnel Pool – one of the temp agencies that my company used. I was in charge of requesting new temporary help for the warehouse where I worked. Because they had an easy-to-remember phone number, I called them most often. And because we gave them so much business, she took me to lunch in appreciation and a friendship formed. We always went to A Street Café in Hayward, a sweet little French place that had pink tablecloths – a lovely escape from the gritty environment I worked in, where I was surrounded by a bunch of guys who ate off a roach coach – long before food trucks were for foodies.

We had a lot of fun in the first years of our friendship. She and Jeff lived out near the Delta, and had a ski boat. My first husband and I spent many weekends at their place, on their boat. We waterskied and got too much sun on our skin. Even though sometimes there was too much drinking, we had a blast. Then, she watched as our marriage started to unravel.

She’s witnessed my evolution from the young woman who had just walked blindly into an alcoholic marriage, to who I am now. And she’s played a big part in my world opening up as it has. Sometime in the last months of my marriage, Brenda took me to see Diane Sullivan, an energy healer, who did some kind of magic on me, because when I went home, just being in the presence of my husband, made me feel like we were the opposing ends of a magnet. I could hardly bear to sit across the table from him at our favorite Chinese restaurant. It was at Brenda’s house I first read of the Enneagram, first heard the music of the Gipsy Kings, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kater and Nakai. Brenda is also the “Godmother” of my art. It was she who pulled it out from under the bed, out of the plastic bags and insisted that it be framed and hung. She saw it before anyone else did.

In the twenty-eight or so years we’ve been in each other’s lives, we’ve supported each other through many trials – illnesses, deaths, loneliness, relationship struggles – there’s a fierceness in our love for each other that means we show up for each other, we hide no truths and we wrestle whatever is between us, until it’s strengthened our bond even more. And I’ve learned how to be a friend in the process.

My memories of female friendship until I was well into my 20’s, were often not happy ones – friendships that were mutually supportive and loving mostly eluded me. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have any sisters – and neither did my mom for me to witness female relationship – or that I was surrounded by boys a lot, but I recall a lot of heartbreak and feeling left out with my girl-friends. I found myself making friends with two other girls or young women who were closer friends with each other, than either was with me.

Since my late 20’s, through my travels in work and life, wonderful friendships have developed. Some of them started with more time spent together and now are very sporadic – life has taken us away from regular contact with each other. The way I see it, we have only so much bandwidth, like ports on our computers. For each of us, there’s only so much capacity to be connected – some of us have more than others – but for everyone it is limited. Dear friends come to mind every single day who I want to call or email – and I don’t get to it. I’m really glad that this way it is for all of us, so that when we do call it is ok – we are happy to be in touch and not hurt by the lack of connection.

This is now a requirement for me – there has to be room for each of us to be and say and do what we need to – or not. Recently Brenda and I were talking about a long-standing relationship with a friend of hers, that had become difficult. What came out of my mouth, is that our female friendships need to be the safest places in our lives. What I said, I realized, has guided me with my friendships. I’ve had at least two friendships in the past several years, that I’ve intentionally let go. As much as it goes against my natural tendencies, to want to always try to mend and heal, I’ve grown the ability to discern where my energies and time are best spent – and with whom.

This brings me to the women who are in my life now. Relationships with these women, form a web of love and support that undergird my life. My closest friends are not a group who all know each other. Though some of them have met, they each take a unique place in my heart, and make a unique contribution to me. As integral parts of my life, they appear in these posts and they form the web that holds me. Inside a feminine-oriented being’s head it can be noisy and bumpy. The doubts and judgments and fears that, at times, have me wonder where my place is, would be unbearable without them. We share encouragement, counsel, honest feedback, commiseration, humor, appreciation, companionship, and celebration. We love each other into loving ourselves.

“Jump and the net will appear.” I don’t know where I first read this – Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way, is coming to mind. It may be so over-said that it’s become a cliché, but it’s how I feel about the women in my life – you are the net that have appeared under me. In many ways, I hardly resemble the young woman, who was responsible for the temp labor at Businessland Hayward. It has required that I take risks, I’ve had to jump – in order to have grown so far beyond that version of me. I’m incredibly grateful for the soft places to land that you are. And I’m honored to do and be that for you. I want you to know that I’m planning on continuing to take these leaps. So, I’m counting on you to be there!

With my love to all of you who are there for me –

Cara

November 3, 2015 – Deep space, deep faith

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When my husband Joe moved in with me, in my little house in San Anselmo 17 years ago, he brought with him his portable Jacuzzi spa. As Marin-cliché as this is, there has always been a hot tub in our backyard since. They are just one of the great things (along with, of course, black Labrador boy-dogs) that came along with my sweetheart. Most nights, just before bed, I wrap myself in a towel, and go outside into the dark and slip my bare body into the warm water. I leave the jets off, so it’s still and quiet. The temperature is just right, warm enough that it feels really good, but not so hot that I have to get used to it. It’s heaven. It warms me to my bones, so I can crawl into bed with a really warm body and can fall asleep right away. I don’t know about you, but if I’m cold when I go to bed – especially, if it’s my feet for some reason – I just cannot get to sleep.

While I’m soaking, I gaze up at the night sky. Most nights seem to be clear around here, so I can almost always see the stars. Sometimes I can pick out the Big Dipper – pretty much the only constellation that I can easily recognize. Now and then a plane goes by, and I imagine the human beings up inside it, most likely headed to SFO. Part of the month the moon is up and full enough, to cast shadows in the backyard. It’s a special time – I’m alone and really present to being alive on our little planet, amidst a vast universe beyond my comprehension. I feel small in the very best way.

There’s something about this time I spend out there in the dark, that re-frames my challenges and worries. It has me feel both insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and very precious at the same time. The ways in which I worry if I “do enough” to further the causes of good settle down, and I can be happy that I get to appreciate beauty and make art, and have people in my life who love me and who I love too. I am also really embodied. It’s intensely pleasurable to be submerged in warm water, breathing cool air, and I cannot help but be aware of how good it feels to be incarnate.

Betsey’s photo from Route 97 in British Columbia, ©2015 Betsey Crawford

I read a post a couple of weeks ago, written by a treasured person in my world. Betsey and I met at the Sausalito Art Festival two or three years ago, and she showed up the very next Friday to paint with us. She and I now belong to each other. Since the early part of the year, Betsey has been on a road trip to follow the wild flowers from the Mexican border to Alaska. She takes absolutely exquisite photographs of the flowers and landscapes along her way and posts them, along with her always perceptive, often funny and sometimes provocative thoughts at: theSouloftheEarth.com. This post was called “Wayside Beauty”, where she shares the magnificent scenery that she passes, as she drives her truck and trailer along the highway – stunning photos included. Nature that has been untouched by humans has a particular kind of magic, that can be like looking up into the night sky – it evokes a particular kind of wonder.

In addition to appreciating the beauty Betsey saw though, I had another reaction to this post: “but what about the beauty we create?” I’d just returned from Paris, having gorged on human-made beauty in the form of art, architecture, style, design and use of color. And then there was the beauty of sound – the bells of Notre Dame, and the concert in St. Chapelle – the other day I heard Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, and it took me right back to listening to the sounds Mozart crafted, coming out of the musicians’ instruments, while surrounded by all that stained glass – a moment with its own kind of wonder. Then there was the beauty in food – to look at, to smell and oh, the taste! We humans have ideas, inspirations and then we create things that weren’t there before, or we transform what was to something altogether different. What we create can be just as inspiring to me as a pristine landscape.

One of my favorite of Monet’s: (Les Roses, oil on canvas, Paris, Musée Marmottan) I loved seeing it again a few weeks ago.

Certainly plenty of what we have created is not beautiful. We seem to be seriously waking up to this now, in our impact on the environment and the climate. This is behind the idea that humans are viewed as separate from nature – as counter to nature – nature vs. humans, natural vs. synthetic. The thing about this that puzzles me is, how can we not be nature? We evolved out of other creatures – we and our consciousness are part of the evolution of the universe – of all-of-creation. And our creations are also part of-all-creation. Nothing that we make, not Impressionist paintings or stone cathedrals, not plastic candy wrappers from Halloween or chemicals that pollute our waterways, nothing that we make came from anywhere or anything else than nature. We and all our trappings are nature – part of all that is.

I just have to believe that the point of evolution of life on earth is not that life, or even human life goes to hell in a handbasket. I believe we are going to continue to evolve, and come up with creative solutions for the problems we’ve created. Crisis is what draws creativity from us. When things are all going along smoothly we aren’t spurred to act. I’m hearing the word “partnership” all the time these days. I think it’s where we are heading. Co-creating the future – humans and nature. Partnership, as I’m learning from Alison, is an act of what she calls “human spirit.” It’s not something that comes out of our – largely unconscious – survival instinct. In order to be in partnership, we need to be in relationship. My evenings with deep space, Betsey’s reports from the wild lands between here and Alaska, and painting the beauty I see in a flower – all this connects me – I am part of nature.

I tend to the trash at my mom’s office where we paint. I’ve set up three bins: compost, where our used paper towels go, recycle for metal, most plastic and glass and the garbage, which ends up in the landfill. Not everyone reads the signs or knows where it all goes, so I regularly re-sort it. And usually when someone sees me, they ask about what goes where. Sorting trash is not my favorite thing to do, but I do it because I care, because I’m compelled – to do my “part” to be in partnership with nature. I really work to not get preachy and righteous about it, but I do want help, I do want others to join me in re-using as much of our resources as we can and putting as little as possible into the waste fields, where still the vast majority of what we discard ends up.

Over the weekend, I read a quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which has been echoing in me. It included the phrase “deep faith in the future.” As I read it, I realized I have this. I am absolutely faithful in our future. Because there is so much suffering and violence in our world, to stay out of despair I have to have faith that everything is alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, it’s not the end (I love this line from the movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”).

Gazing up into deep space before I sleep feeds my faith. It brings me out beyond even the massive human challenge of climate change. It expands time and space out to infinity. And, it brings me right into my space, my body, and this moment. I sleep and then wake to do my part – record the beauty I see in paint and write to you, and sort trash and love my loved ones.

Love,

Cara

October 27, 2015 – I’m still his little girl

I can “see” his love in how his hands are touching me.

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Last week my parents came for dinner on my mom’s birthday. My dad had not heard or read my post – my birthday ode to her, so I played the recording for us all to hear. After it played, I had the feeling that the teeter-totter had been left with someone hanging up in the air – it needed to be balanced out. Life is a mixed bag – we all have challenges and blessings in our lives. On the blessings side of my life, are the two people I was born to. I scored in the parents department – and today I want to tell you all about my dad, my Papa.

When I talk about my dad, I say that he is gifted with teaching, with preparing food, with growing things and taking care of his kids. He’s also a storehouse of knowledge, especially about the natural world. He has planted an enormous, organic vegetable garden every summer of my life. He’s the cook in our family (Mama is the baker), and it is from him that I got my obsession with learning and knowing – when we don’t know we must look it up. Google was invented for my dad – and me!

He was born James Joseph Brown to working class parents: Joe and Marge (Margaret) Brown. My grandma was an identical twin, and she and her sister Helen were pregnant with boys at the same time. She told me they were a sight walking down the streets of San Francisco together, identical faces and big bellies! He and his cousin Curt were born 6 weeks apart, and each were only children – it was the depression and people weren’t having a lot of kids. When I was once preparing a talk about my history with food and cooking, I asked my dad how a city kid got so interested in growing food, and he told me this story: “From my Uncle Dick in Fresno, I was probably 7 years old, I can’t remember if I was staying with him or with my grandparents, and visiting his house nearby. He and I prepared a little plot of land in his backyard and planted some radish seeds. They germinated and started growing and I then had to go back home to San Francisco. A few weeks later, I got a package in the mail. My uncle had harvested the radishes and sent them to me.” His voice had a catch of emotion, as he remembered his uncle and receiving those radishes.

My dad is a renaissance man. He was a Marine during the Korean War, but also was and is interested in everything – food and cooking, but also classical music and opera. He is an artist – he did some oil paintings and later became a ceramics artist and teacher. He took two bare plots of land – around the two houses my family has lived in – and built beautiful landscapes – of stone and wood and exposed aggregate. He worked the soil and then planted trees and shrubs, fruit orchards and of course the vegetable gardens. He loves to read – especially stories. I remember him reading aloud short stories like “The Cask of Amantillado” at the dinner table after we finished eating.

My memories of my dad when I was a younger child, include him with a carpenter’s pencil behind his ear as he built decks and fences around our house, going to the ceramics classroom with him on the weekends and getting to play with the clay, having “Dr. Brown” patch up stubbed toes and skinned knees (it wasn’t Mama who tended to our boo-boo’s!). But most of my memories are with him in the kitchen. Mama went to work when I was in junior high and Dad took over the cooking. He was a high school teacher then. So after school each day, he went grocery shopping and when he got home, he and I made dinner every night – until I went away to college. I distinctly remember him teaching me how to cut up a chicken, how to dice an onion, and how to mince with a chef’s knife. It became second nature for the two of us to cook together. Mama tells me that I’d correct her – when she was doing something differently than Dad did, I’d say “Dad doesn’t do it that way…” These days he doesn’t have as much energy and sometimes he’ll ask me what he can do to help – when I cook for our family out at their house. He trained me well and all those meals we prepared together made me a skilled, confident and creative cook – one of the things that I’m most grateful for in my life.

Dad’s trimming artichokes, I’m horsing around!

Several years ago we had the idea for the two of us to write a cookbook together. We thought we’d call it “Sunday Night at the Browns” – a menu cookbook of the recipes from our family’s Sunday dinners. Along the way, we’d record a year in the vegetable garden, to capture all the wisdom and experience in Dad’s head – and have it include our artwork. We started it long enough ago that I said that it’d be great to finish it by the time he was 80 and I was 50. We’ve passed those two marks by 4 years. The other “projects” I’m involved in have pulled me away. But lately it has been really nagging at me that we’ve let it go. We have an outline and a list of recipes. I know that getting it going again mostly lies in my lap, as I’m the writer between us. So, I’m telling you all about it, in hopes that making it public, I’ll carve out the time to make it a reality. It would be such a testament to the bond we share.

There’s another very tender way in which I’m connected to my Papa. As the only girl in the family, it followed that I was Daddy’s girl. He used to sing to me “Soliloquy” from the musical “Carousel.” “My little girl, pink and white, as peaches and cream is she…” And “Cara Mia My” by Jay and the Americans. I was embarrassed by the attention and used to brush him off. I realize now how sweet it was that he sang to me and I feel sorry – for both of us – that I wasn’t able to just bask in his love. Not that long ago, I was having some energy-body work, which tapped into my feeling the old fears of being such a sick baby. In the middle of this I had a not-quite-memory, but more a felt-sense of my soft little toddler body, being held by my dad’s young, strong masculine body. I felt his solidness, the safety of being held close to him. When I shared this with him, he told me that it actually happened. He told me he’d put on music and pick me up and dance around the room with me – his little girl.

A snuggle with my Papa while on vacation in France in 1995 with he and Mama.

That solid and safe love is there in every hug, hello or goodbye. Even when we say goodbye on the phone – his love is in the timbre of his voice. If Mama is the energy – the sun – in our family, my Papa is the center of gravity – the earth, life-generating, healing, understanding, steadfast. He’s had some health challenges the past few years, which have had me start to worry about how much longer we’re going to have him here. He told my hubby a few days ago that he needed to talk to me – to tell me that it’s not yet time to worry – that he’ll tell me when it is. Ok, Papa, I’m not worrying. So let’s get cooking on that cookbook!

Because, I love you so much!

Cari (my family name)

October 20, 2015 – Mama

Mama was a cute baby and she loves this picture of herself at age 4.

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On this day in 1938, Dragica Nizetich had her third baby – the first one to be born in a hospital – her first two were born at home. They named her Amelia Carla Nizetich and called her “Melia,” (pronounced “MAIL-ya”). The world knows this woman as the one-and-only Niz, I know her as Mama. We all have the life-force animating our bodies, but my mom got an extra dose – she came into this world a force of nature. She was driving (without a license) at 14, had a fake ID at 16, graduated from Long Beach State University in the first class to graduate female Chemistry majors – but she added a Math major to that – and finished up in three and a half years. You see, she had fallen head over heels in love with this handsome guy, Jim Brown, and she was anxious to be done with college, so she could move to northern California to marry him and start having his babies!

The handsome bride and groom.

They married in January and my brother Joe was born before the end of the year, and I came 11 months later, all while she worked full time to help support us, while my dad finished his degree and got his teaching credential. She had all 4 of us by the time she was 25, and had three in diapers at a time – without a diaper service and this was before disposables! She helped my dad build a stone retaining wall in the backyard, taking breaks to breastfeed my younger brother Matt. She marched against the war in Vietnam, was active in school board politics, she made dozens of loaves of bread to sell at the holiday fairs in the Valley. She taught me to sew my own clothes and make jam and apple strudel – including the stretch dough from scratch – as well as how to hang wallpaper and set tile. After dinner she never joined us all to watch “Sonny and Cher” or “The Carol Burnett Show,” she had to be doing something. She made these incredible macramé sculptures with glass fishing floats and driftwood (yes this was the 60’s and 70’s!). Then, she went back to work! She became a successful real estate agent, at the same time she established and ran a carpet business called “A Design Affaire.” It seems she’s always had the capacity for more than one job at a time.

One of the things she’s proud of: she read to us every night before bed.

When most people her age have been long retired, she is still a full-time realtor. She has run an independent brokerage – NIZ Realty – in downtown Larkspur for decades. She’s got to be the best residential real estate broker in Marin. ( And no, I’m not at all biased!) Truly, she knows the business inside and out, she’s a strong advocate, but also a solutions-oriented deal maker. And, she does everything in her capacity (which is considerable) to help her clients – far further than any other realtor I know. I’ve even watched her go to bat for the other agent’s clients, if they aren’t. Over her many years in the business she’s cleaned up many, many properties that have been run-down and filled with the discarded remains of people’s lives. She’s turned them into beautiful places that someone new will make a home. We’re talking paint, refinishing floors, carpet, yard cleanup, new lawns. Some of these have been actual remodel projects, that she has managed for her clients. I can’t think of one time she has turned someone away, telling them their property was too overwhelming to take on. There’s really no one who works harder for her clients.

I never played any sports, or was involved in any performing arts when I was growing up. So, I didn’t have my family come to my games or performances. I waited until mid-life, with my art events, to engender that kind of support. Besides my sweetheart providing the support so I could answer the call to make art central to my life, my Mama has been the single biggest contributor to my life as an artist and teacher. She has been my crew – lifting panels, setting up the booth with me, schlepping paintings and boxes of greeting cards, being there to spell me when I need a break. She drove all the way to southern California with me – twice – each time giving up 5 days of her busy life so I could sell art in La Jolla. She flew to New York when I did Art Expo. I think if I did an art show on the moon, she’d be there.

Now that leading art groups has become such an important part of my life and work, she contributes even more. (Yes, it seems there is no end to the extent she will go.) Twice a week and on some weekends, she makes her real estate offices in Larkspur available to me and to those who come to paint with me – as her gift. It has become our art home, we are calling ourselves the 537 Magnolia Artists – and she puts the roof over our heads.

With all she does and all she gives, what’s most precious to me now, though, is that she and I have become true friends. Her mother died when she was 19 and I have no daughters, so having this mother/adult-daughter friendship is an enormous blessing for both of us. And it is an example of how real transformation does happen in life. As her only girl, all the mother-daughter “stuff” was centered on our relationship. She’s always had my best interest in mind, but being a force of nature, has meant that she’s attempted to wield that force in my life (my brothers’ lives too) in ways that I often didn’t find helpful in the moment.

We each have the privilege to live our own lives, make our own mistakes and then grow because of them. I’ve never had kids, so I don’t know how this actually feels, but I can imagine that it’s incredibly hard to let these beings you brought into this world, who you love more than life itself, to stumble and fall. I imagine that it would go against all instinct to do this. And Mama’s capacity to step in and help people when they look like they need it is – as you can see – enormous. But I didn’t appreciate where this was coming from, and it caused a lot of friction between us. At one point, we spent 6 months without seeing each other or speaking to each other, which, though incredibly hard, was a necessary step in our process.

My favorite picture of us – the Sausalito Art Festival Gala in 2012.

On top of this, I look a lot like her – we’ve been called sisters many times, which makes me feel weird, but of course she loves it! And, as much as I am blessed to have – almost – as much energy as she has, I am a very different person in many ways. It’s felt like I’ve had to wrestle my way from being seen as “Little Niz.” And I have. I am fully separate and distinct. I am so very “Cara.”

It took me over 40 years to really figure out how to let this amazing woman mother me. And like the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, I cannot imagine life without her. Fortunately, she’s blessed with fantastically good health and has longevity in her genes, so it is very likely we won’t have to know what that will be like for a long, long time.

I love you my Mama! Happy Birthday and Cent’anni!

October 13, 2015 – All the Light We Cannot See

Sunset from Pont Neuf our last night as a group in Paris

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When I left you it was last Monday, I was writing last week’s post in bed in the apartment in Paris, where I stayed for a week and a half. A Monday later and I’m writing in a plane somewhere over the ice sheets at the top of our planet, coming home. I wrote that I’d hoped I’d be sick for only one day, but I’m still coughing. This isn’t the story I’d hoped to be writing you after my/our first “Pilgrimage in Paris.”

Denying I was as sick as I was, I spent Tuesday out and about with some of the group and then ended up in bed again all day Wednesday. I even ended up going to the doctor Wednesday evening. I was wheezing so badly that the effort of a one-block walk to the taxi, meant I had to wait a few seconds to catch my breath, in order to tell the driver the doctor’s office address. The kind French doctor prescribed an antibiotic, an oral steroid to calm the inflammation in my lungs and an inhaler. Oy! Getting this sick was so not in the plan.

I awoke to the idea of this Pilgrimage a year ago and have been holding it with such a rosy glow in my imagination ever since. The disappointment that this is how it turned out has brought me to tears. I envisioned a group of artists – or people with artist’s souls – experiencing Paris separately and together, meeting up over a meal each day to share inspirations and discoveries. I imagined that I’d participate in the experiences and that I’d be leader and guide – not just travel-guide, language-guide, but the holder of the deeper experience. As it went, my being taken out of commission meant that each person rose to find their way without me – giving them a more direct experience – finding their own way. But my having spent the better part of three days, towards the start of our trip, out of the group dynamic meant that the group cohesion I’d imagined didn’t really happen.

On top of this, there were other challenges. We had concert tickets at Sainte Chapelle on Monday night. Though I’d been in bed all day, I was determined not to miss it. Just as I was getting up to get ready, I got a call that the key for one of the other apartments wouldn’t turn the lock. Unable to get ahold of the apartment owner, I called a locksmith myself to get it open. He told me it was full of dust – the stairwell was in the process of being re-painted. All this happened within the nick of time to get a taxi in the rain and make the concert before it started. Then, one other person (so sorry, my dear Ellen) ended up getting the bug too, and her apartment mates were called upon to tend to her needs as well. Then, heading home on Saturday, four of the pilgrims had one of those flight-days-from-hell. They were supposed to take off at 10:00am, but with one glitch after the next, the flight ended up being cancelled. It wasn’t until well into the evening, that they had new reservations to get home and a voucher for a hotel to sleep in.

Despite all of this, I heard from just about everyone that it was a good trip. Either, they saw all that they came to see, or they were filled with inspirations to paint from for a long while, or they made new dear friends, or they found an expanded sense of themselves, in their capacity to communicate with people without a common language, or that they gained the freedom by learning to take the Paris Metro, or that they felt the triumph of having given themselves the trip in the first place.

And of course mixed in with all of this was Paris: Notre Dame, that gorgeous concert in Sainte Chappelle, the islands, the Seine, the museums chocked full of treasures of art (we sought out mostly the Impressionists’ art), the cafes, the parks, the Marais, Montmartre, the gorgeous Mosque right in the neighborhood we stayed in and the buttery breakfast pastries! Plus two day trips – to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his last 70 days and to Giverny – a pilgrimage in itself.

Giverny

As for me, I have an even deeper relationship with Paris – a more real one. For some un-explained reason, my capacity to speak French is as good or better than it has ever been. I hired and dealt with a locksmith, saw a doctor and a pharmacist, sent numerous text messages to apartment coordinators, shuttle drivers – all in French! The big test was a little dinner party I went to on Saturday night – 4 native French speakers and me. The vast majority of the conversation was in French and I followed a good 80% of it. This is huge! It’s been 19 years since I came home from my six month stay in Paris. Since 1999, I’ve been back for only a week or so every few years. By all rights, I should be very rusty – I hardly ever speak French at home – really, almost never – and there it was, all there for me. No stumbling, no hesitation – it’s not perfect, but I am completely functional. I was blown away by how easy it was for me. I’ve also not forgotten one bit of the map of the streets that I learned when I lived here. I know my away around like it’s home. And then there was being sick in Paris – in some odd way, it had me feel like being there was less a dreamy fairytale, than it was a place for me where real life happens too.

I interloped over the barriers to take pictures of this dahlia in Monet’s garden! My French-Canadian accomplice took this of me.

I knew that the trip would be transformational – travel always is, but I resisted the kind of transformation that this one held for me. I shared what was going on with my friend Vicki. Here’s what she said:

“Not what you’d hoped for, a different kind of transformation, deeper, more personal. Ride the darkness and disappointment and look for ‘all the light we cannot see.’ It’s there but not what your conscious mind had planned.

Roll with the fear, roll in the darkness–it will not hurt you, and then you will heal… Let this experience transform you by letting go of your expectations of wanting the present to be like the past. The past was marvelous, but that was then, this is now. Who are you now? Where is the light? There’s gold in them thar hills, so you may as well embrace what is and let yourself be sick in Paris.”

The ironic thing is that I’m listening to that exact audiobook right now – still only about half way through – “All the Light We Cannot See.” The Paris part of it takes place right in the neighborhood where I lived 20 years ago and where we stayed this past week, very near the Jardin de Plantes. It’s not WWII and I’m not a blind girl, but that Vicki used that phrase, that my mind is wrapped in that story right now, and that all this is centered on that very spot on the planet – is stunning synchronicity to me.’

The last night of our Pilgrimage, everyone had the experience of seeing Paris at night from a Bateau Mouche on the river – the Seine. As beautiful as Paris is in the day, it is magnificent at night. From Notre Dame west to the Eiffel Tower, the contrast of the darkness surrounding these amazing landmarks that captivate the world’s imagination, makes them all the more astonishingly beautiful.

Pilgrimages are faith journeys. They are not a promise for a blissful walk in a flower garden (though, those walks were part of ours!). I’m certain that there are more gifts that will come of this trip. I’m going to keep asking that “all the light we cannot – yet – see” continue to be revealed, in order to illuminate our way forward.
With my gratitude to the Paris Pilgrims, to Paris and to you for holding us all while we were there.

Love,

Cara

October 6, 2015 – Timeless time in Paris

I’ll resume recording posts when I return from Paris. Thanks.

It’s Monday (yesterday) afternoon and I’m sitting on my bed in an apartment in Paris. I’ve just woken from a nap and as I look out the bedroom window, the rainwater is running down the grey slate on the sides of the Mansard roofs across the street. After several really beautiful days, we’re having some rain. I’ve traipsed around the streets of Paris in the rain before – grey skies seem more “normal” to me here than sun, really. But I’m inside today, not taking in any sights, just herbal tea with honey, lemon and ginger and chicken broth – I’ve come down with a cold – not exactly on my agenda for our Pilgrimage! After lashing about inside myself about it all, I’ve surrendered to having a new experience – a sick day (hopefully not more than one!) in Paris. I’ve never spent a day here, cozied up inside tending to myself, while all of Paris is out and about – including my Paris Pilgrims. They were sweet this morning, getting me citrus fruit and bringing over from the other apartment (we’ve rented 3 apartments in one neighborhood, living like “real” French people for a week), the starting of the soup I’d started after last night’s roast chicken dinner. My throat was scratchy last night, so I had an inkling this was coming.

One of the pictures I had for our time here was to have a dinner in. Yesterday we shopped in the Sunday morning market a block away: rotisserie chickens (French chickens just taste better), buttery yellow potatoes (ditto) cooked in a gratin with crème fraiche (the French have incredible dairy products), tiny haricot verts (green beans) and a big green salad of butter lettuce and French radishes with a shallot-Dijon red wine vinaigrette. And of course a Bordeaux from the wine shop and baguette, and we had a Sunday dinnertime feast! Two of the Pilgrims, Tania and Karen added to it, with the most exquisite looking cupcakes I’d ever seen, like gorgeous French roses.

They’re spending the day out and about without me and it’s just fine. We’ve had two days together so far, giving everyone their bearings. I don’t think that I’d have just chosen to stay in and let them all venture out if I’d not gotten sick. I’m imagining that they will come back with great tales of their adventures today. They were starting on the Batobus – a water “bus” that cruises up the Seine, making regular stops along the way. Fun! As much as I’d really rather not be sick and would love to be out with them, I’m wondering if my getting a cold isn’t really offering us all an experience that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. There is a gentle sweetness to my being inside listening to the rain, writing and resting. And they’ll spend time without my translating or speaking or navigating for them, allowing them a closer relationship with Paris without my being “in the middle.”

Before I left last week, I had a very strong feeling that I was going to miss Joe and Bo so much, I’d just ache for them. I cuddled with Joe the morning of my flight, my physical being connecting with his, wondering how I could leave? It was a new thing. I was actually worried that I’d not want to be here when I arrived! I was telling myself I’d been here lots before, was Paris all that special, really? Then we landed Thursday morning to blue skies. Riding in the shuttle into the center of Paris, bright with the sunlight, I remembered. I was tingly. Paris. I was here, really here.

As I thought about this when I was taking a hot bath earlier this morning, other timeless moments I’ve had here in Paris floated by in my mind:

• The first was when I walked out of the Gare du Nord in 1984, my first time ever here. I remember looking around and, though I did not know my way, I had the clear sense that I’d been here before. I must have lived here in an earlier lifetime, because this city has never felt foreign to me.
• Then soon after arriving for my half year in 1996, my boss, the zany Dominique, took me on a private night-time tour of all of the major monuments in the center of the city. We careened around, as he drove like a true mad Frenchman, excitedly telling me about all that I was seeing. He was so proud to show me his city.
• Returning from a long weekend in the Loire Valley that same year. It was a really warm August night and time stopped, when I was on the bridge that connects the Left Bank to the Ile de la Cité, at the back of Notre Dame. I was struck by the fact that I’d been away and had come back “home” to this.

The same view captured this past Saturday night.

• My first trip back after my 6 months, was 8 or 9 months later. It was May 1997 – I was here for meetings at my company’s headquarters. I’d arrived in late the afternoon and took a walk from my hotel along the Seine, across the Pont des Arts to the Louvre, and as I walked around the pyramid and out towards the Place de la Concorde, the high sprinklers were going in the Tuileries gardens and were caught by the setting sun. It was magic.
• A misty grey afternoon when I was here with my brother Matt – we met my friend Bruno and shopped and made a weekend lunch in Bruno’s apartment. It was a cold, cold November day and there wasn’t anything more perfect than to be warm inside cooking, eating all afternoon.
• A kir in the lounge of a posh little place in the 6th, called L’Hotel with my friend Julia. The hotel is in the building where Oscar Wilde last lived and where he died. We swear his ghost was with us.
• My last trip here with my Mama, it was a January evening and below freezing. We’d just seen something like 180 paintings by Monet at the Grand Palais. (This was while the Musee d’Orsay was being remodeled – also how we got the two big Impressionist exhibits at the De Young in San Francisco in 2010). We were wrapped up from one end to the other, our toes numb in our boots as we walked across one bridge up from the Pont Alexandre III – the most lavishly ornate bridge in Paris, the moon was full and shining on the water. It was hard to believe it was real.

That cold night in January

These “pinch me, am I really having this experience?” moments like I have here can’t be planned, but they keep happening, it seems, every time I’m here. And it is this that has inspired the “Pilgrimage to Paris” that we are on. There is a spirit of place that draws us and meets us – some of us, anyway – and it is as real as any relationship. The invitation to this Pilgrimage was “does Paris call your name?” She has been calling mine for a long time – and has inspired quite a bit of artwork to come from me. This is my hope for the six Pilgrims here with me now.

Paris may very well be the most charismatic city in the world. I’m sure there are millions, if not billions of people who, when they think of Paris, are enchanted – whether they’ve been here or not. And yet, I think it’s possible for each of us to have a relationship with her as our very own – her spirit is timeless and boundless, there’s enough for each of us to claim her as ours.

Paris, je t’aime.

Cara