Today, today.

It is the end of yet another summer weekend in Santa Barbara (some hold to the belief that summer ends with Labour Day... I choose to believe that the end comes at the autumn equinox, September 21ish. Why would anyone admit to the earlier date?)

I've begun my drawing class: so far we've drawn lines and shapes (focusing on positive and negative space). It is quite nice to start at the beginning, at the basics. I had forgotten how dramatically the practice of art can alter ones perception of the world. I sat on the couch in my room this evening, listening to melodious sounds from Portugal, and tried to see the Spanish moss on the patio for its negative space. It tried to see not one continuous shape cascading in tendrils from the place where it hung, but hundreds of tiny shapes dancing about amongst the tendrils. When I looked further into the yard, I saw the sky as a shape bound by trees and structures; for a moment that huge, visually endless expanse was a form that could be rendered. How does it all work? I wondered.

Try it sometime: look for the negative space in the world.

I spent today in the garden... I have a bit of a sunburn to show for it. I've started several plants from seed, and some of them needed to be transferred from there little bins of moss into larger pots of soil. I quite like the process: handling something so delicate, something so mysterious as a seedling. The experience reminded me of certain good qualities of life, but what these are I cannot quite say.

In sum: it was a fine summer weekend in Santa Barbara.