bits and pieces

I was optimistic, got it wrong again, this is from an email this morning...

"Spring? We'll have this season at march 21 bella ! You have to be more patient this is a long winter."

Darn. Well I don't care, for me it is spring.

As I put the treadmill pendenza (slope) up to 8 for the first time at the gym this morning I asked myself "Why do I always need a challenge?" Why do I never take the easy option? I don't know the answer. But in an email recently I waxed on about how the word "bored" was not in my vocabulary (ask my children on that one!) Maybe I get bored easily, and have to always have a challenge? But I don't think so. I think it is because there is a busy creative life in my head, there is always another picture being painted, another story being written, another house being planned; my head gets too full sometimes, and my brain yells "stop!"

It's a bit the same with emotions, too, I think. I suspect that getting past that 60th birthday in New Zealand was harder for me than for the birthday boy. Someone once said to me, you artists feel things too much, you're much more emotional, you see things differently. Perhaps we do. Maybe that's why traditionally we all go mad, and to think that I was blaming the toxins that we inhale and absorb as we work!

But now, we're over another hill, back at the gym, spring is here despite what my friend says, even though I know that February can be the coldest month in this part of Italy, and it really is, very much, good to be alive.

And here's something to think about. Yesterday I added to a previous blog about the candles for calming storms. I hadn't been to the church to get one. Not my thing, I thought. At 2am this morning we had a huge storm. I got up and pulled things in from outside. I unplugged the computer (having lost internet connection in the storm, mine is not a landline) and snuggled back into bed. The thunder crashed, the windows shook, lightning lit the room despite the rattling shutters being closed, and the storm rolled up and down the valley, across to the mountains on the other side, only a few miles away, and back up my side again. It took well over an hour to pass. Each time it sounded as though the windows might break, I thought about that candle.