Happy New Year! (Sensing)

Good Afternoon, my Angel,

That was a beautiful picture of the two kitties this morning, and a wonderful sentiment to begin the New Year. This is gonna be a good year, we can just feel it. We can enter it with great expectations, but no pressures or worries. "Life Is Magic", and we know this to be true. Everything is gonna work out fine.

I liked the words in the posts of your friend Taya, and I know that you are going to feel very inspired this year in your music and photography and in everything you do. I think the inspiration begins as a love of life, and as we know, that love begins with appreciation of all the little details, and a neverending sense of wonder. We are both blessed to have this appreciation, and you will find that if you nurture it, it will become stronger in you every day. So, my Darling, here's to a beautiful year!

I started the New Year day as always, watching the Rose Parade on TV. Pearl loves it, so we had fun seeing all the floats and marching bands. No local teams are playing in the Rose Bowl, and Badgers didn't make it this year, so I may watch a little bit of the game, but I'll probably go out and look for a New Year's photo or two, and do part of my walk. I trust you are enjoying your day, and I think that because we have each other, we can't lose. Day by day, 2014 will be great!

I Love You, Elizabeth.  xoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)

(back in a bit)

11pm : The rest of the day was quiet. I did look for photos, but the light was kind of flat. So many of my photos are outdoors, of scenery, so I have gotten to know the different qualities of light, month by month. In L.A., January light is best when diffused a bit by overcast. Except we aren't getting any. It might as well be April or May, temperature-wise, but light-wise it's still January. Bright and flat.

That's okay though. I will get back to my explorations soon enough. Holiday time was chill time, and now we will work our way into the New Year. I find, for me anyway, that creative pursuits are best intuited rather than forced. It is good to anticipate what you want to accomplish, and it's also good to plant the seed in your head, but for me it always comes down to sensing, then following. Like, in 2010, I got it into my head that I wanted to draw. Hadn't done any art since the mid-90s when we were all painting at Burton Street. But I could sense that need coming on, out of the blue, and so I followed it, and I wound up drawing most nights that year. Pastels, abstract. You do them, and then you let them sit. And then you revisit them some time later, and you see what your Muse was trying to do. "Oh, this is why I felt the need to draw". It may not even be a concrete reason. But the creative impulse speaks to you from underneath.

I like to allow it to find it's way to the surface, rather than hoisting it out of the water. I always wanna know what it wants to say, just as much as what I want to say.

A good start to the New Year, I think. I liked the picture of the girl in the Kimono, because as the caption read, she has a collection from the pre-war period, and as you can tell, that is a period in history I am nostalgic for, even though I didn't live it. How the world made it through that war I will never know, but beneath it, there was a romance, a loyalty, and even a sense of optimism. And a seriousness, too, so that pursuits and desires had great meaning. And it is nice to see that it has carried over to this day, many decades later, in something lovely and meaningful as that kimono collection.

I Love You, Elizabeth, and I will see you in the morn. Sweet Dreams until then!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)