Mixed Textures Of Beauty And Banality

Sorry about the pretentious title for this post but it is still pretty accurate.  I am currently eating fresh strawberries for dessert following a simple meal of toast, hard boiled eggs, cheese, a yellow bell pepper, tomato slices and tahini.  I love tahini, but only buy it occasionally.  I don't know why it hasn't become a constant staple.  I like it at least as much as peanut butter.  I spoon it out of the jar or dip bread in it.  It is rich in protein, calcium and healthy fats.  When I was homeless and a kind lady took me into her home for the last two weeks of my ordeal till I found a room in a shared apartment, she asked me what foods she could buy for me.  Tahini was high on the list.  It is a comfort food and sometimes I can't get enough.

I began a new drawing today, of another Colombian bird, called a black collared jay:

Gorgeous, eh?  I started it at home during breakfast, then continued to work on it inside a local coffee shop before I went to a meeting at work.  Co-workers and supervisor were kind enough to let me continue drawing during the meeting.  Doing artwork in a meeting seems to do wonders for my attention span and I tend to remember a lot more details of the meeting.

During lunch I walked for about two and a half miles near the neighbourhood where my paternal grandmother lived (and by extension temporarily my own immediate family) for many years.  Despite the many rather ugly new houses (why are new houses almost always ugly?) the streets were still so full of trees and abundantly blooming gardens that it didn't appear to matter.

There is an Anglican parish church near the team where I was working today.  It was open so I went inside to sit down on a pew.  It is a small and very old church.  I was hoping to absorb the silence but instead became absorbed myself into the silence.  The presence of the Holy, of the Divine, was rich and palpable in this place and I felt incredibly privileged to sit in there for five or ten minutes, to spiritually refuel before resuming my work just one block away.

I was at a second meeting, largely devoted to a presentation of the future site of the team where I work, an integrated site that will include housing, market and social.  I don't know if I will still be working there then as I am getting old and in five years I will be preparing for retirement.  Or maybe not?

I then went to work with a client in southeast Vancouver, then walked for a long time, absorbing the beauty of flowers everywhere, especially a huge abundant spray of the reddest poppies I've ever seen against the grey stucco of a very ordinary postwar bungalow.  In a produce store on Fraser Street I bought broccoli, tomatoes and bell peppers, then walked further to the train which took me home.

For a while the evening sun transformed the fresh leaves and rhododendron flowers of the garden across the way into a vision of green fire, rubies and blood.

I feel tired now, since working on the drawing for a while and soon I will be going to sleep.