Lisa Thorpe

2 Dogs, 1 Goat and a Moment of Serenity

This November week has been filled with, to do’s and deadlines.  This Saturday I have a booth at a wine/food/art festival and needed to get art as well as my entire display set-up ready.  I needed to make up more reprints of past work; I like to have some affordable stuff in a bin so there is something for everyone. Anyhow this should have been a quick thing, print, package, boom, check it off my list.  But no, my printer was being persnickety, for every one print it would balk and spit out 5 or 6 unprinted pages, seemingly disgusted with the thick paper I was feeding it.  I stood huddled with the printer, hand feeding and pressing the red paper feed button for each print!  Ugh, this quick task began eating my morning.  I remembered something about the printer not liking the moist air (very foggy this morning) so I put a few sheets of paper in the microwave to see if that would help… it did but the paper was a bit warped, uneven drying I guess, I began to ponder the wisdom of putting the paper in the oven when I landed on the idea of placing the sheets of paper in the dryer on my sweater rack. KAPOW! It worked, praise the Lord I muttered, then looked at the clock.  I had frittered away almost two hours on twenty prints!  I don’t want to do the math on this one, my time, plus paper, plus ink, ugh…. a venue change was definitely called for.  I decided to take my dog for a walk. So down the drive we tromped.  When I came to the Swift’s driveway (another family at the Ranch) I remembered that I said I would help with their very old dog Hazel, and Arturo a baby goat they are foster caring.  So now I had one little dog, one half deaf, half blind big dog and a small headstrong goat.  Let’s walk.  If I thought I was really going to get a walk in and herd this little trio, well my wildly unrealistic expectations were soon dashed.  I would not be getting in my power walk, I knew that when I started, just hoping to multitask that’s all, you know how it goes.  I gave up my lofty ambitions as we four, two dogs, one goat and I, meander back up the drive towards my house.  As one big dog rolled on the fresh cut lawn of the volleyball court up ahead and one little dog chased a vulture across the meadow opposite and a wee goat nibbled dandelions along the drive, a mysterious, and wondrous moment occurred.  The sun broke through the thin clouds and just as I turned my face to it’s warmth a swelling swooping ensemble of starlings flew low and dipped down so close to Arturo and I that we could hear the beat of each birds wings and felt the fire of their fierce little hearts as this fleeting flock swirled past.  They were gone as quickly as they came and little Arturo who had turned at their passing held his face to the sun for a few seconds more before returning to his browsing, meandering course up the hill.  The ephemeral moment reminded me of another time in which I had followed the dot-to-dot path of a traveling toddler.  At two, my now fifteen-year-old, would meander on a path of desire that only he held the map to, and I gladly followed in his wake.  Those days are long past, so brief in the scope and spread of my life but those moments, and this one, right here, right now, with the sun and crisp air, the parting clouds and passing birds, one goat and two dogs meandering no where, doing nothing, are such a pleasure, such a gift.  As I run to get the camera to mark this moment, I chide myself for even trying to gather in one picture the serenity of sun, birds, clouds, dogs, and goat.  As I raised my camera clouds covered the sun and the old dog wandered off but the feeling stayed… I share it with you.

I will be taking next week off from the blog, when I return I’ll share my November painting.  Follow this link to my website to see about upcoming sales, shows, and classes  http://lisathorpe.com/events.html