On Tuesday night I drove to Harvard Square to go to my non meditation class (the leader Joel, says that if you are meditating you are working too hard - it's really about relaxing). I parked near the Commander Hotel and walked through the Cambridge Common. It never ceases to amaze me that I live where I grew up. As I walked I mumbled under my breath: here is my old stomping ground (where I cavorted as a thirteen year old on Saturdays and Sundays when there would be free concerts....) Tonight was one of those spring evenings when EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, the sky filled with Zeppelin clouds and great cobalt blue and grey rain clouds. Some bright lighter blue out there too closer to the horizon and the fierce sun crackling through everything. The trees were starting to bud out and fan out their copper and bronze color which was all lit up against the sky. I was taking mental notes: coppery mustard color against cobalt blue fudge color (Marion from the meeting said there was lavender in that blue color, she is a painter too and this helped me a lot because I was completely confused by that blue - just couldn't figure out what I was staring at). The Harvard spire was a gleaming white lance reaching into the sky, the clouds were moving, the illuminated tree buds were like lacy jewelry. I am trying to do something different these days with my inspiration. The old patterns are that I get overwhelmed and feel grief that I am missing everything - that I'm not painting and capturing what is so gorgeous and I might throw in some added self-torture by thinking of artists like Sargent or Fairfield Porter who would just grab it and paint it. The new patterns I'm working on are this: get inspired, fill up on it, take mental note and work in the studio tomorrow on it (that lit up coppery mustard against the cobalt bruised and pregnant sky!). Go to your wonderful meeting Alexandra, the one that is teaching you so thoroughly to relax in the present, to love the present, to understand that the grief, the panic and the regret are the old habits. I will do what I can, be filled up with awe and make a little painting about that night. And even if it is just a study of two colors I will be grateful to Cambridge and to the Springtime.