December Face

Drawing is a thing I do every day, not always a lot, but every day. It is like playing guitar for me, and those are probably the only things I try to do every day. Routine is something I have never done very well with, but breaking routine is not that difficult, with a proper context. In my case the context is that of a teaching schedule where it might seem that every day is pretty much the same, but not so (here's where the "attitude" of the context comes into being) because every day "feels" different to me. The minute I get up and head downstairs to the gym I have a premonition of a new and fresh day, but I can't do the feeling justice in this writing because I'm not sure what the source of the feeling is exactly. I know it has a lot to do with attitude and how I sense what is around me. Let me try.

The "sameness" is there, the rooms, the stairs, the lighting, the objects in the house, but there is a "newness" in the quality of the air, in the sense of time and in my knowledge that this will be a new day, with different words, different sounds and different thoughts in my head. That awareness of the unique nature the day presents upon my awakening gives me spirit, it lifts me to an awareness of who I am in the moment and also a feeling that this "uniqueness" will be re pleat with a range of human emotion. Some days will be a wide cascade of emotional textures while others might be a narrow band of joyful satisfaction or of discordant discouragement, but they all fit into the experience of life.
Today was joyful, as I picked a coat up off the floor for a student and hung it in my room (she forgot it after school in the excitement of trying out for a school play), I helped a student after school who was struggling with the technology involved in a difficult assignment and I answered a phone call from a home-schooled student who has signed up with me for a class next semester and wanted to meet with me this week to discuss things he might do in class to help others. These are only three things, but they stuck in my mind as unique and important for today. It was a good day, it started at 3 a.m. as I wanted to get a web site up for my Art Honor kids and I couldn't sleep, so I'll finish this post, and get to bed. The drawing came out of my head as most of them do, but I would be hard pressed in my current state to explain exactly why and where I found it. I do know it has to do with spirit and the holiday season, it might not be all that positive a thing, though.