Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

This is one of my favorite creations but I needed a little serendipity to complete it.   First I drew the table without thinking of anything else.  I loved the curve of that leg so I echoed it with the billowing curtain but as I looked at the empty spaces out the window I realized that the piece was going nowhere.  It was background for nothing so I put it away in the flat file. At another time on another piece of paper I drew the pelican and hated the background I gave him so I cut him out, and put him away.   The two pieces lay in obscurity until I decided to clean out the overflowing drawers, making piles of Keep, Throw Away and What Do I Do With This?  The Pelican and the table by the window fell together and Voila! The swell of the pelican’s chest echoes the curtain and the table leg,  the colors in his feathers echo the gray in the sky.  The unexpectedness of his being there rates a double take. Did he just fly in the window? What...

When my daughter, Jessie, was three she was terrified of tow trucks.    That was my fault.    I’d say, “C’mon, c’mon, we have to hurry, the tow truck’s gonna get our car.”    She’d run ahead of me and reach up to grab the door handle, protecting the car from marauding tow trucks. “As long as I’m here, no tow truck will take our car,” she seemed to say. Imagine her delight when she spied a tow truck towing another tow truck.    It felt like vindication to her. I told that story for years until it became part of Jessie’s legend. She grew up and told it to her daughter Molly.    Molly loved it so much she begged to hear it over and over, then she told it to her friend, Flynn, as if she’d seen it with her own eyes.    Then Flynn told the story as if he’d been there.    Now it’s legend and I’m sure one day Flynn’s grandson will say to his grandchildren, “Did I ever tell you about the time I saw a tow truck towing ...