Writing today’s journal entry reminded me of a quote by Henry James that is one of my favorites: “Be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.” Searching for the exact words I came upon a bit more of the article the quote is taken from:
“The power to guess the unseen from the seen , to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it–this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience, and experience only,’ I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
Henry James “The Art of Fiction,” 1884, in Longman’s Magazine
The lesson, writers? Take note of everything. It is all worthy of your art.
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Day 4 – A Watercolorist’s Journal
You may think, when you are learning to paint, that you are training your hand, your fingers, your whole arm, even, to make certain motions, to recreate certain effects: a wash, a fine line, a splatter. Lift here to avoid a smudge. Blot here to avoid a puddle. You may even think you are training your eyes to see. To know when the paint is dark enough, wet enough, when the blue needs some orange to temper it, how gray that is really purple differs from gray that is really green. All the while, in fact, it is your mind you are training, to notice things you once overlooked.
Taking a shortcut through an alley I notice weeds sprouting up, here and there, in unlikely places. I appreciate their leaf structure, the elegant curves of their stems, the dots of hidden color on the undersides of petals, showy little starbursts dancing on pollen-dusted filaments. I appreciate the groupings and massings, the clusters, and always, the odd ones out. The blossom creeping over a fencepost, the blade sprouting from a pavement crack.
I remember the day I sat, with my mother, filling pages with little soft watercolor sketches of buds and leaves. I wonder at the sheer variety of such things in the world and my ability to recognize even one small part of them and say: “Yes. I remember you. I know just how to press my brush–soft, then hard, then soft again–for a leaf, how to swipe it, without too much thought, for a thin stem. I can swish together a little bundle, sprouts, hedgerows of you and your friends, creep you and twine you, there in the corner of a blank white page.”