While I was out walking my dog, Ebert, today, I breathed in the sights and smells of spring. Little buds are just beginning to show. Luckily, E-bow decided to really sniff out a patch of grass, and I really had a chance to examine these little leaf embryos (see them in last 2 pics below). Balled up like little shy fists, they're just starting to become brave enough to open their eyes to the world. The folds they're still behind though, reminded me a conversation I had with a woman last week.
I was waiting on her, and she asked me if I was teaching Spanish (I don't know how she knows I have taught it.). Anyway, I said I was focusing on my art work right now, and she told me the following story. She said that sometimes she will draw a picture on a small scrap of paper. She'll then fold it up into a tiny piece of paper, like a bud. Sometimes she decides that she will score it with a sharp knife in order to "get it going" like an apricot seed. Then she plants it in the ground and waters it.
Well, I thought, what a grand idea! And when I saw those little balled up, green gems on my neighbor's young tree, I remembered the paper art garden lady. (This is what I'm calling her since I don't know her name.) I think, what if we could actually plant art underground? What if you started with just a tiny little picture, a 2" x 3" scrap of paper? Would a 24" x 36" fully-painted canvas pop up like a towering sunflower? Or would the art just grow deeply underground--a magnificent gallery show for earthworms? And sometimes on a summer day, you would stare down at your bare feet burrowed into the green grass and think how beautiful the lawn looks, never realizing it's really because it is glowing from the creations below it.
The little buds that led to this painting:
Sun, give us more. Let's go! (-:
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