No.25 Another season has come and gone

I've been caught unprepared, over and over again.

A shocking blue sky in Rush, NY

This year we’ve had a real and proper autumn— crisp sunny days; cool ones with wind or rain; some overnight frosts upstate followed by stunning, blinding afternoons of high contrast sun in a bronzed blue sky with crunchy leaves underfoot and yellow-bright gold ones showering from the locust trees at each little gust, like being inside an enchanted snow globe of light and warmth.

It’s been a spectacular fall. And yet—the thing that had me up at the farm for much of September and October was treatment of a serious medical condition which landed my Mom in the hospital, twice. She is strong as anything. The outcome has been positive after being touch-and-go, touch-and-go. But, things as they are, I can say I enjoyed being up there at this time of year; enjoyed spending more time with my family, even if under distressing conditions.

Scenes from a stunner of an autumn day at the farm upstate

The upshot, aside from fall at the Farm, is that my sense of time has been muddled and compressed in a way it hasn’t since early pandemic. I’m constantly having to check the calendar— it is November.

The trips rather put my art projects on the wayside, but I’ll dive back in. Ditto reading, and diving back in. Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to start a book, get stuck in, and get more than halfway through in a few sittings throughout the day. It is one of the high pleasures in life, to read unhurried and un-harried.

A couple of sketches of my buddy, Ray. I will miss in ways yet unfathomed

Later in the evening I learned the awful news that my friend of 25 years, Ray, has left this world. 

He is dead. We have lost him.

The world won’t be the same without him, he has left a gaping hole here in Brooklyn, and in many other places where he has friends and family. I can’t process it to make it real in my mind. 

What a season of doom this has been in Brooklyn. My neighbor Fran, the much-loved unofficial mayor and ambassador of my block, had a sudden stage 4 cancer diagnosis and was gone way too suddenly, leaving her sons bereft. And now dearest Ray. Poof! I crossed his path just a few weeks ago and he let me know he would be working that Sunday, and to stop by. And I didn’t, because things. Because busy. 

I thought we had more time. That’s what I thought when my father passed, too.

It’s what we always think.

Thank you for being here.

I’ll be back with more art soon.

x Liz