beyond the obvious edges

my faithful steed - monica lacey 2011

On Sunday I rode the clanky cruiser bike into town to see the collection of International Award-Winning Shorts that Picton Picturefest was presenting.  I was happily rewarded with the surprise of Shaun Tan’s film, The Lost Thing, being included in the list.  It’s a gorgeously animated story, adapted from his book of the same name, about people not noticing things that are right in front of them, and about the magic that lies at the edges of things.  Today a combination of the oppressive heat, the music of Basia Bulat, and an incredible short story (called The Offing) by Anik See has me feeling pensive and mellow.  Sometimes it’s really nice to be in such a state; you notice things - slow, small things that you might otherwise never even see.  The smell of the hay in the warm breeze, the red spiders spinning webs in the windowpanes, the scratch of your own pencil moving across paper.

the fence line - monica lacey 2011

This afternoon I wandered past the mown edges of the property here, through the long grasses, watching for stinging nettles, past the tree line, to the site of an old barn or house:  nothing left save some icebergs of concrete and an ivy-covered stone wall with a vine-filled opening where the door once was.  I love places like this – it’s like nostalgia given solid form.  I think it’s something about the way nature will claim a structure; it’s a loving, tender, yet forceful and determined way, that feels to me the way it feels to love something and want to own it at the same time.  Maybe that’s what nostalgia is:  love mixed with longing….

While I was back there, I pulled several square-headed handmade nails out of some old boards and wondered about the people who made them.  Making things takes time, and care.  I’m working on some drawings today – botanicals, of dead plants and leaves left from last year’s growth.  I love the lines of the dead leaves; they are the same lines my hand naturally wants to make and it feels like an understanding.  It’s wonderful to have the time to simply enjoy making lines on paper, to enjoy making something with my hands.  And then to have the time to enjoy turning words over in my mouth to find the right ones to describe the making.  The gift of this time, and the quiet, thoughtful, sustainable creativity it is cultivating in me - it feels like a luxury, a blessing, an honour. 

Two weeks from today and I’ll be landing home, hopefully ready and armed to start a new chapter of my life as a professional artist.  As unpredictable as I expect that chapter to be, I feel a certain peace about it – these turning points, shining, where you realize that everything you’ve experienced up to that point has prepared you for all that will come next.