Sunset, Wednesday, 26 August 2009

William Theodore Van Doren. Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

Off to Pittsburgh for about four days – it’s the 90th birthday tomorrow of my delightful aunt Millie, my mom’s sister and the only surviving sibling of either of my parents. You should be seeing three Pittsburgh sunsets, although they may not get posted until about Monday. Meanwhile, I’ll be leaving notes and sketches here as I can.

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Walking through the woods into the fields today was strangely like going from thought to expression.

Inside the woods was all leaves and letters, details – dead trees on the ground, sentences here and there, ideas, fragments, pools of water on intermittent streams.

Step out into the open fields – boom! Under the wide blue sky, it’s a world of fully developed, finished thought – of books, films, musicals, essays, epic poems. The works. Fireworks.

On a lucky day you catch that transition, from the woods into the fields. Something you had been thinking becomes something you can say.