using just my words

i try to take a walk every morning after i write. there is a loop i like to take around the north part of central park, which affords me a pleasant combination of people-watching and nature-observation that i find stimulating and inspiring.

today the wind kept gusting up in random bursts and shaking the leaves loose from the branches overhead. showers of yellow leaves drifted down in shafts of sunlight, like glittering golden coins, but moving more slowly,
like feathers
or molasses
or slow dancing.

it was like magic.

i realize that these are my favorite trees and i draw them often: trees with a few leaves...
perched on the precipice between fullness and hibernation,
introversion and extroversion
summer and winter.

poised in fall, like some glorious rite of passage, vibrant, proud, celebrated.

i didn't have that. responsibility and maturity rounded the corner on me at an early age and i'm just now starting to grieve it. the change. the loss of something. the birth of something else.

"how trite."
the critic in my mind scoffs at such suburban self-therapy speeches. but i don't know if comparison is the way to deal with suffering. although knowing that there are people with worse stories than mine could inspire a sense of gratitude in me, it doesn't change the fact that every human walking this earth suffers. and has hurt. baggage. regret. pain.

and everyone is free to choose how to live with that.

x,
sam

daily illustration

there was a huge storm that came through town last week and destroyed many of the trees in the northwest corner of central park, where i often take my afternoon walk.

i came upon a particularly large, freshly-cut tree stump and was compelled to count the rings. 83.
i stood there on the stump for a bit, thinking things over.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

my father died two years ago today.
it's really weird-feeling. hollow.

love,
sam

p.s. the daily drawings are still up on my flickr, where i had first dealt with my grieving.
also, you can view the above illustration larger by clicking on it and heading over to my flickr.

nyc walk

i stopped walking at that moment. thinking about my father and how i always think about him when i smoke - or was it the other way around?

it was impossibly hot and humid outside and something about the moment, sitting there in the semi-dark, seemed ripe to get it all on paper... this intangible feeling.

i missed him - always would - and would welcome any moment to remember him.

across the street the sounds of basketball and sneakers stopping short on polished wood drifting out of a second story window brings me full circle to john wooden and his life lessons in threes. my father loved threes too.

it all seems to matter.

spring is here!

we went for a walk in central park yesterday and were stunned/excited to see everyone out enjoying the sunshine.