Frame Your Vision – May 7, 2017
Frame Your Vision
My current writer crush is Mary Oliver. There’s really no questioning “why” when you begin to unearth the magic of her art. Drink in a little bit of her poem, The Journey
“… little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
A few weeks ago my sweetie and I took in a “Sketch Walk” sponsored by a local art gallery. We had a few leaders sharing their travel sketchbook secrets as inspiration. Sometimes you just need a gentle nudge. Sometimes you need an “I should have had a V8” palm-to-forehead smack. Sometimes, you just need to slow down long enough to see things in a different way.
The sketch walk took us into the historic part of our lovely city. It was a brilliantly beautiful blue sky spring day, but the wind had a not-quite-summer chill in the air. We decided to tuck ourselves into a little nook of a doorway of a hefty stone building – the sun wrapping us in a warm blanket and a dose of Vitamin D, while the windbreak was just what we needed to hang out for a bit. Cell phones had no purpose and weren’t invited to the party. The only wi-fi connection we needed was wirelessly tuning our gaze onto something in front of us, and connecting that to the pens and sketchbooks in our hands. For an hour, I stared intently at the brickwork, the arches and the other architectural facade components surrounding the neon sign reading “Rialto Fountain – Lunch – Club Room”. I’d occasionally be distracted by a child with an ice cream cone coming out of the Big Dipper. A man walking a dog on a leash. Groups on benches, conversing and giggling. A skateboarder rolling by. Mostly, it was an hour spent being and seeing. When we decided it was time to move on, my step was lighter, my eyes were brighter. I held the arm of my beloved. And I vowed to do more of this. Be. And see.
“In the beginning, I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, and who I wanted to be.”, Mary Oliver reminds us.
Go out into the world and see and be. This can be as easy as taking a walk into your own yard, or city, or trail system, or as big as a grand adventure to a land you haven’t met face to face yet. It doesn’t take expensive equipment or weeks of time. The only thing it takes is awareness, and intention, and you.
Are you ready to launch yourself into the world – to see and be differently? You may be thinking it’s too late to get a great summer job – but we’re here to tell you – there are GREAT jobs being posted every single day.
Make time to see and be. We’ve got your back. And wish you well on your journey, always.