New Web Site and Class in February!

Two things:

1) I finally have my Web site up and running! Visit www.caitygrether.com.
2) I'm teaching a watercolor class at Roberts' during the month of February! Contact me for more information or to register.

Faith to Move Molehills

So it’s December, and from my blog it appears that I was MIA for a couple months. Here’s the summary: I came back from London in September and picked up where I left off. Except suddenly I didn’t have enough space to make art, I didn’t have enough time to look for exhibition opportunities, and I had no ideas of what to paint. I came up with enough justifiable excuses to fuel hours of rebuttal with anyone brave enough to bring up the fact that I had stopped doing something I loved.

Then I went out of town for a weekend and found some inspiration. But it was the kind of inspiration leaving me wishing that my life had occurred in the 19th century when I could buy a small shack near a beautiful pond and live off the profits of my crop of beans--a life spent working in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and reading by the candlelight.

So I came home even more frustrated than when I left. But I eventually started to figure out some stuff.  For example: 1)  I need to live in the present, and 2) I need to act in the present.

I highly recommend this devotional given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland at my alma mater in 2009, entitled “Remember Lot’s Wife.” Elder Holland points out that in the Old Testament story, Lot’s wife met her unfortunate fate because she was not only looking back, but looking back longingly. As he states:

“To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now; to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future; to miss the here-and-now-and-tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there-and-then-and-yesterday—these are some of the sins, if we may call them that, of … Lot’s wife.”

The second realization, that I need to act in the present, struck me as I was thinking about my hopes and dreams for the future and the Lonestar song “What About Now” came on the radio. I don’t particularly like this band, but a lot of country songs are grandfathered into my playlist since I grew up with them. Anyway, as I listened to the lyrics,

“We could hang around this town, forever making plans,

But there won’t ever be a better time to take this chance,”

I realized that the things I always meant to do just needed to be done. Now. There was nothing standing in my way of doing the small things that had been on my list for weeks, like renewing my library card, or even the big things, like finding a studio space or some other solution to my painting issues. That’s it. The answer was to just do it.

It’s funny how simple it is to take care of a molehill when you finally realize it isn’t actually a mountain.

Consulting the fleeting voices: What the trees would say

This is a new beginning. It is as new as the commencement of summer, spring, winter, and last year’s fall. I may look the same—as if I were returning to a previous state. But time’s eternal round cannot stand still. It cannot roll back. Last year’s leaves have long since blown away or decomposed, dust to dust.

These leaves are new, different. I am different. So take courage and follow me to victory. Let's both roll on with that eternal round.

Oxford Rooftops

Oxford Rooftops, Caity Grether, 2010

Correction

In my last post, "Jelly Beans and Excuses," I accidently left the word "not" out of the phrase "this dialogue did arise out of regrets." What I meant to say was "this dialogue did not arise out of regrets." I have since changed the error, and you can reread the last paragraph in its intended form. I am embarrassed by my lack of proofreading.

I tend to do a lot of embarrassing things. Last week I was on the underground, and as the train was beginning to pull away from the platform, I reached out to grab a pole to steady myself. My fingertips were inches away from grasping it when a sudden lurch caused me to fall backwards onto someone's luggage. It was not a graceful fall. It was the slow motion kind where it appeared, to me and probably everyone watching, that I had more than one opportunity to stop myself before collapsing on what was probably some guy's tennis raquet or picture frame. But, unfortunately for myself and the luggage, I didn't. And, to add more awkwardness to the situation, I asked two people whose bag I thought it was if I had broken anything, neither of whom turned out to be its actual owner.

I guess in comparison, a typo in a blog post isn't that big of a deal.

Jelly Beans and Excuses

Cemetery Sketch 1

I could not stay awake in my American art history class a couple years ago. It was 8:30 a.m., the lights were dim, and I had just worked a 3 ½ hour shift at my custodial job. And I had other excuses as to why it was impossible. But one day my professor, who apparently was annoyed that I was only awake for 20% of his class, put a soap-flavoured jelly bean on the table up front and issued the threat that the first person to fall asleep would have to eat it. I stayed awake. And I realized that it was not too hard. I simply needed the right motivation.

There is always an easy way out. And it doesn’t seem like it’s such a big deal the first time you say “it’s too hard” but pretty soon that phrase is stamped with a large red X over every worthy opportunity in your path. Sometimes you don’t even have to acknowledge that you’re passing things by. You just veer slightly to the left or right to avoid an obstacle, then another one. The path of least resistance makes men and rivers crooked, and whether you credit evil or entropy, the easy way does not lead anywhere worth going.

I’m not usually lazy, and this dialogue did not arise out of regrets. But I am reevaluating my excuses. Some of them are valid—not all of us can do everything. But even if it takes oddly-flavored jelly beans, I want to make sure I’m doing the most I can.

Musings from a Bus Ride to Bath

Right now I'm on a bus, riding through the English countryside. It's not too different from any other countryside I've traversed, except the bus is on the left side of the road and the bones of my ancestors have lain here longer. The sky is as big here as it is in the desert, and the clouds are just as dynamic. The villages date back farther I suppose, and the rooves are thatched.

I just saw Stonehenge for the first time. As I looked at those stones that stood vertical before any known record bore witness of their existence, I wished I had been here before the roads. Perhaps even before the villages and maybe while the outer circle still guarded the inner one.

I've been in England for almost three weeks now. This is my second international traveling experience, my first being a visit to Caribbean islands that were reconstructed in the image of this place--with tin rooves replacing thatched ones. The West Indies were adopted and abandoned by the British and other European countries, and what is left is a facade intended to fool both its visitors and its inhabitants.

While I was there, I compared the real Caribbean to the pictures, films, and dollar store calendars that depict it. And now I find myself again comparing the original to the copy--the old world to its facade in the new one.

Before today I had already seen Stonehenge represented in a variety of media and circumstances. Though I barely allowed the thought to enter my mind, I felt tainted by my tendency to compare it to its image that comes with Windows to be used as a desktop background. Does there exist a more banal representation of a more revered monument to world history?

Not that I can think of. And as the bus continues on to Bath, I wonder how much it will resemble the pictures online.