The Artist Date is a dream-child of Julia Cameron. We’ve discussed her book, The Artist’s Way, and highly recommend both the book and the weekly date. It can be life-changing. It can open your creativity like nothing else. This week, we’re hanging out over a spillway soaking in the suds of a frigid bubble bath.
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The ice hasn’t gone out yet on Lake Farley.
I’m perched a bit precariously on a concrete ledge which is not so high above the ground that I can’t reach it in one very tall step. My feet are larger than the ledge, and it’s slick and wet.
To my left, the lake, top crust frozen to a translucent olive. To my right (I think that’s east), the Whetstone Creek. It’s running rather quickly considering the way the water seems to have come to a standstill at the base of the spillway straight in front of me.
Lake water pours out from under the ice in brown squiggly torrents. The sun will not emerge today, so there’s a dingy reflective layer. The sound of rushing water drowns out any other noise I might pick up here, though there isn’t much else to hear except the complaints of the geese who flew north too early and whose poop I dodged in my red sneakers, as I made my way up the small hill to the ledge.
Should I mention the smell? Stagnant. Sulfurous. The smell of water that hasn’t moved in too long a season.
The scene holds little appeal, all in all. Even the foam, which has doubled in size since I came yesterday, has something distasteful about it, like the cold soap suds left over after a day’s worth of dirty dishes.
But the foam. The fluffy, mesmerizing foam. Globs of dirty suds dot the dried brown lawn of the picnic area, blown free from the heaving monstrosity of it at the base of the spillway. Currents from water and air roll beneath; it swells with the movement. Pieces, large and small, break free and chase one another in the air, sometimes rolling like a tumbleweed off into the reeds, other times catching back into the inhales and exhales of a pulsating, downy mass.
There’s a dog forming in the pile of foam on the far side. Then it’s a volcano. And now it’s a cloud broken free, looking for blue sky to float into.
By tomorrow, those geese will have a new grievance to file and the foam will be indistinguishable from eight inches of fresh April snow.
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Post by Will Willingham.
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Maureen Doallas says
Brown Cloud
The suds perched
precariously on lawn,
so high my sneakers,
running red, came straight
to a standstill. My feet,
slick on olive ground, flew
as the cold foam doubled.
My complaints over
soaking in the frigid bubble
bath hold little appeal
to all the geese that smell
the dirty day’s worth of air
on the distasteful spillway.
Like tumbleweed, they
roll through — a movement
of fluffy, squiggly splatters
of brown cloud I too early
dodged. Yesterday, another pile.
Tomorrow, I might catch one,
a break, very large or small.
Monica Sharman says
This is the kind of artist date I need. To find something pulsating, swelling with movement, fluffy and mesmerizing, even while all in all it’s distasteful, not appealing, dingy, stagnant.
L. L. Barkat says
Maureen, I love this, “Tomorrow, I might catch one,
a break, very large or small.”
And so the Artist Date becomes wisdom, questions, words.
Monica, I loved that part. The swelling even in the uncertainness of the season. There’s movement in it that says, “you will catch that break. See? Winter, though it doesn’t look like it, is just catching hers now.”
LWL, I could watch that video just about forever. It really is completely mesmerizing. You seem to have a way about you, capturing these simple but mesmerizing experiences on video.
Laura says
The sound of that water falling in the video seems to me an insistent reminder that when I let myself flow this way–when I am fast and furious falling; there is a billowy foam-place to land…a place that slows me down and bids me listen.
Jody Lee Collins says
We spent some time at the coast the last few days and my husband remarked more than once about the caramel-colored foam churned up at the shore…there’s something so restful about that shushing, certain sound.
I’m with LL–I could listen to that video often–it was mesmerizing.
Diana Trautwein says
Amazing stuff here – in every way I can think of. And it looks DANG cold. :>)