now the eyes of my eyes are open. . .

e e cummings

Perhaps my favorite poet.
Reading and rereading his words, I always see something new.

Like today.

Monday, June 2...

Three of us often paint together on Monday afternoons.

MMS, MC and me.

We encourage each other and support each other.

Today.

MC brought in an arrangement of flowers in a basket.

It was a birthday gift.

"Happy Birthday, MC."

She set out to make a small picture of poppies with oil pastels.

So, MMS and I took up our brushes and began sketching the arrangement in the center of the large table around which we work.

Two hours later, MC looked at our work and expressed amazement that our pieces were so different.

MC even noted that we had used similar colors. Once again I wondered and marveled about sight and insight. Seeing and overlooking. And I considered how much I like taking photographs and drawing/painting.

Before the invention of the camera, in the preface to the second edition (1843) of his work The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach observed that "our era...prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to the reality, appearance to being" and he asserted that a society becomes "modern" when one of its chief activities is producing and consuming images.

So, friends, what is the difference between stopping to smell the flowers, stopping to photograph the flowers and stopping to paint the flowers? None of these make us master gardeners. But do these activities help keep us grounded even if our hands are not in the soil?