2000th Post!

Happy New Year's Eve! Isn't it appropriate that the last post of 2009 should be #2000? I think so. I hope your year was a success, not totally, I'm not a complete Pollyanna, but I trust you can look back on the past 365 days with satisfaction, for the most part anyway.

December 31--Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov, Still Life of Fruit. I want to plunge into this painting with its lush late summer fruits. Look at the colors--purple, red, and pear green. Don't you love them? Don't you want to immerse yourself in their richness? Imagine how it smells when you lean over the table. The perfumes of earth and sky, the sweetness of rain rises to tease your nose. The promise of the sugar made by sun and heat and rain makes my mouth water. This is not what I want to write about. I want to weave a story about someone looking at this fruity bounty, write of the room where the table sits, tell about the hum of bees in the garden outside the window of the room. But instead I am caught with my own hand reaching out to pluck a grape or savor a plum with the rich golden juice of it on my chin.

Well. That was the perfect way to finish a year, I think. I'm trying to let go of my rigid ideas about the way things "should" be and let them flow, so a bit of writing going its own way is a good way to be. Right?

Here's to an interesting and satisfying 2010 for all of us.
--Barbara