Yesterday, I was leaving work, driving around our building and through the parking lot. It was stressful day, a usual day, another day of never being able to catch up and sinking more into the morass. I was muttering to myself and ransacking the brain to figure out what I could throw together for dinner. I did notice that the sun had finally come out after four days of heavy rain.
I rounded the corner of the parking lot in the large office "park" and drove past a big grassed area backed by woods where we occasionally see deer and even wild turkeys. On the corner of the grassy area is a lone dogwood, small, planted only a few years ago. Someone was standing under it and I slowed down as I approached.
It was a woman, a young woman, standing right under a branch and looking up. She was holding a notebook in her hand and looking up and down. My God, she was sketching a branch. Sketching a branch in a Moleskine!
I slowed down. Was she an artist? A student doing a homework assignment? Should I honk? Call to her? Pull my Moleskine out of my bag and wave it at her? Offer to share my drawings? Ask to look at hers?
After a micro-second of due deliberation, I took my hand off the window button and drove on. The courage to create should not encourage crazy middle-aged ladies flagging you down like a long-lost artist date.
I drove home smiling all the way.
