Finally posting my sketches from our family vacation.
Tag: Sea
Beach Houses, Big Sky
Although it’s still summer, the first of September feels like a turning of the year, a return to school and schedules, and a farewell to cicadas and the least possible clothing. In parting I celebrate the day with a watercolor of Duck, NC, where the family just spent an idyllic week, and, attesting to the season’s ambivalence, a poem by A.E. Housman.
XXXIX (from Last Poems)
When summer’s end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.
The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.
From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.
And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.
The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of those.
They came and were and are not
And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.
So here’s an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer’s parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.
—A.E. Housman
Elizabeth
Duck, North Carolina, Part III
Starry skies, sunrise, and sea maidens.
Johanna
Karuna
Katherine
Duck, North Carolina, Part II
Creatures of air, land and sea; and a search for gifts.
Bill Elvin
Duck, North Carolina, Part I
Watermelons and wild waves.
Marta
August Morning
A poem by Albert Garcia in celebration of the poignant, brief-and-boundless late summer.
It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
—Albert Garcia
Francine
Until we meet again
A traditional blessing, along with a page from my Ireland sketchbook. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone.
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
the rains fall soft upon your fields,
and, until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
—Irish blessing
Simone
Moon Over Orcas Island
Keep your fingers crossed for clear skies tonight so you can see the Blue Moon: that is, the second full moon in a single month, which will not happen again until 2015. I post a watercolor of this month’s first full moon (which my daughter and I admired from Orcas Island), on August 2nd, in its honor.
It is a celestial event that seems especially significant in light of the passing on August 25th of Earth’s moonwalker Neil Armstrong—the first human being who could gaze up at the full moon and say, “I was there.”
Katie
Rick
Beach Birthday
It’s ironic that my husband’s birthday falls in December, because he is a sun-worshipping beach-loving guy. So on this day I post a sketch I did of him the summer that he bought and launched his inflatable kayak. This is what I would REALLY like to give him for his birthday: warm, happy hours gliding through the ocean at sunrise and sunset, gazing at dolphins, dreaming.
Jimmy
Imagine
—John Lennon
Sophie
John Lennon