on softness

we could all use a little more softness, don’t you agree?  i have deleted my news app from my phone for a few months. i need fewer things that jangle my nerves. i need soft music, soft friends, and soft conversation. i need soft blankets, soft clothes, soft caresses, and kind words. there will plenty of time for making lists, setting goals, being my best self,  and upping the ante on productivity. for the rest of february, all i want is softness.

winter tall grass

…more winter reds

still picking up on the winter reds out there. once you start to see it, you can’t look away. maybe i am just internalizing all the valentines day messaging.

february crabapples

winter reds

our winter landscape is beautifully muted. white snow, gray skies, brown tree limbs, and evergreens. a visually quiet time of the year.  it suits me. i like the lack of distraction this time of year, there is one notable exception: winter reds. red staghorn sumac, red stems of dogwood bushes, red crabapples, and the red berries of high bush cranberries. dots and lines of red against white snow. like a flicker of light in the dark. one can’t help but take notice.

the calming quality of a grid

i love grids almost as much as i love circles. order. clarity. balance. it all contributes to a sense of harmony and calm. things all in their place. things all as they should be. beautiful simplicity.

collection of beach stones

starry night

i just finished reading a 1500 page biography on vincent van gogh. vincent and his brother theo shared almost daily letters , so it is possible that we are able today to write such a detailed biography. the letters themselves however, tell most, but not all his story. his life was hard. very hard. he wrestled with mental health all of his life–back when there was no support, and no sympathy for anyone ‘who could tarnish the family reputation’. anyway, the last 300 pages of the book go into detail about the inspiration and making of his most well known paintings, including starry night. by the time vincent painted starry night, he was having intermittent psychotic episodes. i believe he painted starry night as he truly saw it. not as a stylized abstraction of a night sky. in any case, this is the STILL version of a starry night–caronas, halos and all. my version cost me considerably less distress than vincent’s cost him. then again, in 300 year, vincent’s starry night will not only be remembered and mine will not, but his will be selling for 1 trillion bitcoins, and mine will be free on the internet,

austrian pine pine needles