I have been ill for a very long time - a very long and boring story.  Now it is time to prepare for the next journey - my time is coming to an end.  What do I intend to do with it?  Well, paint - of course, and read from the pile that is every teetering on the nightstand by my bed.  Sleeping is becoming as scarce as a day with manageable pain.  So having a studio (thank you Tim having one built for me and thank you Carlos for building it during the pandemic - you and your wife are like family to us) means there is somewhere to go in the dark of the night and get absorbed by the muse and her artsy friends.  What am I working on now?

This painting has gone through several stages, as have most painting except I never know what they are until they begin to appear on the canvas.  I'm not kidding - no painting planned has every really come to fruition.  When I go to the place inside of my mind where there is no storm brewing, no pain to contend with - it begins with the shoulders relaxing, a sigh, a look out the window and watching the hummingbirds or the crows as they come to visit.  Music, sometimes, most times just the window open and a slight breeze.  I watch across the mountains as the clouds pass by - at night I watch the moon as it makes it's way across the night sky.  Sometimes I hear something outside the studio door when the screen is pulled tight - maybe the opossum that visits, maybe the raccoon who brought her four little ones to us this summer, we have watched them from the size of a young kitten to the size of a bulldog almost.   We left some grapes out, they were cold from the refrigerator, I rolled some out into the lawn - the mamma never took her eyes off of me while she patted the ground looking for the grapes.  The crunch sound and her delight at the juicy cold fruit was a sight to behold.  Later, she would leave the little ones up in the trees while she went out foraging and many a night we came home to find the young ones perched in the crotch of a branch off the trunk, hanging out, looking for all the world to be bored.  I take out some grapes and roll them their way.  The pondering while they must have decided since mamma was okay with us being out there on the porch at night, it would be okay for them.  They had recently learned how to climb down the tree, sometimes tripping over the one on the lower end of the trunk, sometimes tumbling near the bottom!  What a summer.  The heat must have been a bit much for mamma because one night, after filling the bird bath we re-posted to the picnic table, mamma climbed up to get her raw egg and went over to the water to wash the egg before eating it.  She took a drink, then she put one front foot, then the other front foot into the cool water - we sat there watching as she slid, full body, swollen teets from nursing - into the bird bath.  The look on her face, relief, joy, a sign and then - - she stayed motionless for about five minutes cooling herself.  A sight we will not ever forget.  I turn back to the painting, it seems to have grown a spine since the last I worked on it.