Script Streams - Meanderings

Gratitude art

Gratitude Art.

I cannot draw to save my life. Even my stick figures look rather strange. It is so bad that in high school when it was discovered that Latin was a particular challenge I was encouraged to take art as an alternative. I was happy. How difficult could that be? Also I liked art from a spectator’s point of view. Three weeks into the artistic experiment I was back to Latin with a note which indicated that I cannot be as bad at Latin as I am at art.

I am glad I conquered Latin. However, I still loved art enough to do some art appreciation courses later on. Also, I know without a doubt that I am vital to art and artists. My reasoning is as follows: If everyone was an artist who would appreciate the art? I am definitely in the art appreciation camp. I revere those who can and am first in line to show appreciation.

Fast forward many years and as a result of Alzheimer’s my art has been hung in an art gallery. I can claim to be a curated and hung artist. Will wonders never cease?

I do know my limitations but when it comes to my Bert there are no limits so off I went gallantly with him to art therapy. It was interesting to attend as it was held in a historical home and museum. After the usual tour and tea the project was to create a work that illustrated gratitude, or something for which we were grateful. I decided I would help Bert with his idea and interpretation rather than show my ineptitude. That was not to be. I was told everyone had to produce something.

Bert did not need my help. In no time he had drawn something that looked like a house with a figure in it. He told our wonderful art therapist that it was me at home. He told her that meeting me was the best thing that ever happened to him. Awhh. That’s my Bert.

However, remember I cannot draw period, so I could not return the compliment. I went the modernist route to create a ‘thought’. Yes!

We had paints, canvas, dowels, string, shiny buttons, sequins. My creation was a wall hanging using mixed media. I used a pretty crystal studded button and if you look carefully the squiggly thingie in the middle is embellished with sequins. Yes, even I have trouble with an adequate description of this masterpiece.

So here it is followed by the ‘artist’s note’.

My Gratitude Hanger.

This represents a positive attitude and sunny disposition. The colours are bright, happy, and sunny with sparkly embellishments to represent certain intense moments of happiness.

Friends and family have spoken of my happy outlook. Many have told me that when they are feeling down they call me and know that they will have a brighter outlook afterwards.

Look and you will and see the tears, but they are dominated even overwhelmed by HAPPY and reach upwards to become the streamer of a kite? A bird? Wings?

It was in middle age that I finally realized that this quality so obvious to the people I meet was a wonderful gift. Now I recognize that as a fact and I am immensely GRATEFUL!

Come on stop laughing! It’s not that awful. Maybe it is. When I proudly presented it together with the catalogue, which also featured my work and photographs of the exhibit to our son, he looked at it made a noise that sounded like “Huh!” and said: “Mom, you are a better writer than artist”.

OK, I’ll take that! “Huh!” Everybody is a critic. “Huh!”

The Meander: Look at my big grin and the proud stance of my Bert. Priceless!

Chinese to me or a good read.

In Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien, the 2016 Giller Prize winner there is a paragraph about the Chinese dictionary explaining how words are formed and get their meanings. It says that in Chinese there is a ‘root’ word or ‘radical’ that becomes the building block for other words. As example, a certain character means gate but it is also a building block. Place the character that is ‘sun’ or ‘light’ to shine through the gate and the new combined character becomes ‘space’. If the character for horse is placed inside the gate, then it changes to ‘ambush’. I paused as I looked at the drawn character and my mind immediately segued into the Trojan horse story perhaps the greatest ambush in literature.

The stream of thought did not stop there as I then remembered the great Canadian scholar Northrup Frye who taught English Literature at the University of Toronto. His classes in criticism were always full and his book The Educated Imagination was a standard text. I remembered listening to him and forgetting to take notes. He posits that literature encompasses or has its roots in the ancient myths and legends, the Bible and the hopes and dreams of all humanity.

Sitting in awe of erudition had happened before. Professor Love, whose passion for English Literature was displayed in every class made me know I had been right in choosing to follow my own love of literature as my chosen field of study in preparation for my career in Librarianship. When I took his class, there were another five more years yawning until I finished graduate school but with enthusiastic anticipation the light towards that end shone big, bold and bright.

Then there was Professor Allen who introduced Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities in the first class of the semester. He began the lecture by analyzing the very first paragraph. The entire class was spellbound as he laid out the whole story, including the historical context, the social impact, the record of an entire era by just analyzing that one paragraph. When he said: “Now next week…” we all came out of a collective trance, looked at the clock and realized that the class was over. Two hours had sped by. My friend Kay looked at me and in unison we exclaimed: “My God”! It was both in awe and in the fervent hope that he would not expect such erudition from us come exam time. It was the beginning of what for us could be the best of times or the worst of times.

In Thien’s novel it was the worst of times and the best of times held together by what I consider a very important character: Music. Music was the ultimate communicator, historian, reporter and refrain. It raged, it soared and was the glue cementing lives and generations. It was both conqueror and the vanquished yet always providing solace within the chaos.

The Meander: I knew I would enjoy reading the book. Reading literature brings all the world to you. It not only entertains but will send you to places of stored memories, to the past, to joy, to sorrow, to now, to the future and to think.

Perpetual Calendar

Today I updated my special occasions calendar.

You know the one,

The months and days are listed

But not a year.

You note your special events, birthdays, anniversaries.

Some call it a perpetual calendar

But it is not.

As I added six new birthdays, two new anniversaries

I also deleted ten names

They had died this year, too many.

Yes, they are gone I thought

But only from the perpetual calendar

They remain in my heart.