"To look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it. For what it is." -Virginia Woolf

Tea and toast for breakfast. I sit on the back porch sipping, and thinking of all the things I could do today. The list:
-cut grass
-clean house
-work on new manuscript
-hang laundry on the clothesline
-collage

Dreams of eating honeycomb last night. Wanting to fill the pages of my journal so I can get a lighter one, (the one i have currently is like carrying a brick. beautiful but heavy.) Thinking of all the things we will do when J comes for a visit next week.

I do enjoy sitting here, sipping tea with a pen & an open book. Sometimes it is just the act of moving a pen across the page that makes me feel good, no matter what is written (or drawn). Is it that thoughts are being expressed? I am not sure. Why also do I enjoy seeing pages fill up in the journal so much? A form of capturing a process, evidence that one existed during a period of time?

I watched "the Hours" again last night for the umpteenth time, (you would think I would be tired of it by now.) There is something so beautiful about watching the act of creation, and then seeing the characters come to life. I enjoy watching Virginia so immersed in her story that she mutters to herself in public, the moment she figures out an important plot idea. There is a knowing on her face.

As in the previous quote, I believe journal writing is a way of "loving it for what it is", seeing beauty in all of it. Taking a moment to sit here and watch the wind blowing the trees. How often I get pulled out of the world by work, phones, questions.

This morning I notice the wind, the birds, the sound of the trucks on the highway, the temperature of the tea (lukewarm now), the bright red of the chair, my cat sitting quietly on the step.

I have taken to sketching while visiting friends houses. Random objects. Things on the table in front of me. a blue & white pot, a lemon juicer full of juice, a dead butterfly, some peas in the pod. All about little moments. I pull out my waterbottle & box of watercolours and paint while chatting. (yesterday upon my return home I realized I had forgotten about the painting and had earlier drank most of the bluish water. Are watercolours non-toxic? Will I pee blue?)