Art as a Cake Walk

Nellie was my first and favorite friend when our family moved to Lawrenceville my junior year.  At graduation, 1966, I played for her to sing a solo,  a strange song called "My Work Is Done." What must we have imagined we'd do after high school, all our work finished up, I wonder?

After graduation we went our separate ways to college and marriage and different states and lost touch.  We saw reconnected at a Christmas service in Lawrenceville many years later, and shortly after that we took a trip to Italy together.  She read the Rick Steves' guidebooks and kept us on track, and we were excellent traveling companions.  

I remember visiting her once in Florida where she and Art (her childhood boyfriend who reappeared after many years and they married on the beach) now live.  And she visited me once in San Antonio.  We've watched giant turtles dropping eggs on the beach, made collages together,  maneuvered a small Italian rental car through curvy Tuscan roads, and met some of each other's friends.  

COVID slowed almost everybody's art making energy.  We've both played (in all ways) less than we used to.  But yesterday she sent me this lovely affirmation to get back to living like an artist.  I loved it so much I wanted to share it.

Today I am going to start living like an artist. 

Today I am shucking my ratty gray gown and dressing simply, quietly, so as not to disturb Art with a capital A. I am savoring the morning quiet as I make my coffee and light a candle to keep it warm. I contemplate the dream that woke me. Cake walks. The adult game where the prize is a cake from the mothers…donated and perhaps yours to take home. What a curious custom to surface in my night dreams. What a strange mind that recurs such memories.

I’m going to recall the senses today. Little ordinary moments of beauty, of memory. Numbered circles that with luck might result in a sweet treat from a neighbor's kitchen. Life as a cake walk.

Is that where it comes from? That saying? Noticing, recalling, making a visual or written representation of quotidian cherished moments past? Life as a cake walk. 

Today I am going to start living like an artist.