Strawberries, milk, honey

Altered books, pots of acrylic paint, and friendship

Every so often a small group of us get together for a few days in the mountains. We’re holed up in a cozy cabin in Banff in the Rockies where we share meals, great conversation, discuss what we are reading, talk about the current challenges (or milestones passed) in current works in progress, and generally bask in the delights of good company and common interests.

And, we write (or plot, or edit, depending where we are in a project). Sometimes this work happens at the big dining room table, sometimes in our own rooms, and less often at one of the many fine coffee shops close by.

This weekend, one of the women brought along bags of art supplies and a couple of sample books alterable with the addition of paint, texture, text, collage, or… whatever someone might decide would be an interesting addition to a page. (A while back I wrote about altered books - you can find that here:

Haunted much?

Thinking another couple of used book options might be helpful, a couple of us went for a walk to a community bookshelf where people drop off titles hoping these well-worn titles may find new homes. Then, off to the library, where I know there is always a rack of books for a buck as well as a bin where one can find damaged books for free.

Rupi Kaur’s memoir collection of short poems must have been last read in a bathtub (or, canoe - either is possible here) as it is a tad wrinkled - but a fine work to inspire someone considering options when it comes to combining text and image…

Her loose, line drawings and spare, direct text combine on the page to create powerful storytelling. Rupi Kaur is also a performer and poetry phenom on Instagram (@rupikaur_), someone who is embracing the possibilities when it comes to fusing various artistic modalities and doing it on her own terms.

When we aren’t using the dining room table for sharing fabulous food, art supplies are tantalizingly close by.

Could I resist? Of course not. In the middle of what was once a perfectly respectable mostly-blank page before the Table of Contents in a book found in the reject bin, I left two words in a minimalist erasure poem, and smeared paint everywhere else.

memory

wonder

The words written in a somewhat chaotic manner at the top are quotes taken from conversations heard over the course of the day.

Time moves faster in the mountains.
Even faster as we age.

The colours semi-randomly squirted on the page and spread about reminded me of the colours of the Bahamas and Caribbean, where, yes, time does seem to move a little slower. Metaphor? Reality? I don’t know.

But if time is zipping along ever-more-quickly with each passing year, then how does an infant perceive time flat on her back in the cradle, staring at the mobile dangling just out of her uncoordinated reach?

And, because it seems to be a theme for me at the moment, I picked up on the wonder left behind in the sea of paint and speculated whether, in the final analysis, any of this navel-gazing actually matters.

And after, in the ether —
I wonder…
Will I wonder?

All in all, today has been a perfectly-paced smorgasbord of stimulation and time to play, write, think, and create.

Sigh. Does life get much better? I think not.