Art & Life in Books

Gaining wisdom

Accordion book created in Sas Colby workshop

Rummaging through my box of saved papers, (it goes back at least 40 years), I uncovered a poem Sas Colby wrote in 1980. I would have been 28 when I received it (in the mail, a freebie she advertised in the now-defunct Fiberarts magazine back when it was a newspaper-type rag.)  Read it and you'll understand why I kept the poem, why I longed to grow older and become wise.

ART & LIFE IN BOOKS
by Sas Colby

First

I am selling all my books
about art
and art theories,
aware that I don't want to be so strongly influenced
by what others say,
wanting
my art to come from an
authentic place
within me,
getting rid of external trappings
so that I can be closer to myself
and what I know from
inside. 

Second

I am selling all of my books about how to
live life
feeling
that at age 40
an open heart and
a third eye will guide me.
Does it sound as if I think I know it all?
Here's something I never told anyone before:
I do know it all!
So do you.
I just found this out.
The secret of life is to
breathe
deeply.

I always looked forward to turning 40. It felt like a magic number to me. I thought being 40 would finally signal that I was a grown-up, as if a number could confer the self-assurance, confidence, and verification that I was was seeking. My 40s were good, but trying. Life was starting to make sense, but navigating it was haphazard, taking action without a plan, operating on instinct, while working and herding 6 kids aged 2-20. Halfway through my 40s, a 50-year-old friend said "Wait until you're 50." Excited for what lay ahead, I eagerly anticipated my 50s. She was right. My 50s were better than my 40s. My 60s were even better. My 70s? My body isn’t keeping up with my spirit, my mind, and my ever-growing desire to create more, more, more. I am working to get in better shape so that my 70s will lead me into a healthy, creative 80s and beyond. I still have so much left to do, further to fly.

Every time I let go of something I remember her poem. Sas, a multi-media artist, has been my hero for decades. She is still exhibiting and going strong. I was fortunate enough to take a class with her many years ago. I walked into her classroom scared to death, still trying to find my way in becoming an artist. I left feeling confident and competent. She stretched me and I survived. (See final project above.)

But, unlike Sas, I won’t give away my books.

I’ve had some amazing teachers along the way, but it's my art books and all my "how-to-live-life" books, along with decades of living and following my heart that got me, both mentally and creatively, to this wonderful place I am now. I reread or refer to them often. At 71, I’m not only still learning, I’m relearning things I learned decades ago, approaching them from a place of experience, a new idea, or a changing viewpoint. Something I wasn’t interested in back in 1994 may be just what I need to know in 2024.

I have been seeking wisdom all my life and it is all beginning to coalesce. It started with quotes, bits of wisdom passed down through the ages, that, at 13, I began to glean from my Dad’s bedside copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, a book first published in 1855.

• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Aristotle

• An unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates

• Be still, my heart. Homer

• A room without books is like a body without a soul. Cicero

Quotes have shaped my life. One quote became a guiding light in those turbulent 40s. I taped it on my mirror. I saw it every day. For years. It’s still my guiding light, permanently imprinted in my brain. I saw it on the mirror the day I walked into Sas’s class.

Stephen King says, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” “Books are the mirrors of the soul,” said Virginia Woolf. If you would like to explore some of the books that made a difference in my life, I have added them to my Amazon shop so you can take a look and see what they are about. It’s likely your local library has them, too. All my copies are full of marginalia, a necessary way for me to process and remember the salient points, making it easy to reread what excited (insighted?) me the first time. Rereading often results in delicious new scribblings and insight.

The little twig on the back page of the book was the starting point for the project.

(Is that page an unexpected foretelling of Further to Fly? I once, no, twice, dreamed I could fly; a dream so real that my body and memory still retain that ethereal feeling. But that’s a story for a future newsletter.)

I’ve just spilled my deep relationship with books. How about you? Love ‘em or leave ‘em?

P.S. Every little like or comment you share below feels like a smile from you to me and is truly appreciated. And if you’re so inclined, spread the wings word and share Further To Fly with a friend.