Last week was school vacation week, and our family traveled to St John, we flew in and out of Boston, and upon my return I attended my 40th High School reunion. I graduated Newton North High School, two blocks from where I grew up and where my Mom and sister still live, so I've always visited Newton, but had lost track of all but a few of the people I knew there and except for reconnecting with some on social media, there is still a huge distance in time and space with so many. Our class was over 800 kids maybe about 150 or so came, really too many to ever really know.
So why do we do it? Certainly the "coming of age" theme must not be too dissimilar in Mumbai or Mozambique? Maybe not? In a world of 7.5 billion people, 800 looks pretty small. A lot can be said about common experiences and shared memories, some kids I remember from kindergarten, yes I was 4 when I started, and still hold many. Many are rather fuzzy and they are probably not things my classmates remember, they each have their own, and maybe they intersect and maybe they don't. So all these people, who would otherwise be a total random assortment (OK the same age), get together for a party, and the kids you were friends with or knew as acquaintances, are pretty much the same as they were, at least in character. It's just 40 years later. 40 Years, over twice our age at graduation, and time enough to experience life's joys and sorrows, life's fullness and maybe some emptiness, 40 years is enough time to get to know yourself, and hopefully love, or at least accept who you are. It snuck up on me, the point of it all, in this group of people, of completely different characters, with completely different lives, I had the epiphany of belonging, not in any way that you could name, but in the place beyond description, a place at the core of being. It was the best party ever and I love you all!!!!
This is my family on the ferry back from St. John to St. Thomas after our excellent vacation!
Here is the view from our bungalow on a hill overlooking Coral Bay, St. John.
This is the 9th watercolor I did on this trip. I hadn't done anything in this media, probably since high school! Still deciding how I feel about it, so different than oil, there is a luminosity with the pigment over the white of the paper. I chose it for the ease of traveling, but was not set up right and that will take a lot more experimentation, but on a whole it was fun and I got some bad paintings under my belt.
I had a mini reunion with Mike Porter, a friend from the old days, he lives on the same side of St. John we visited, and just two days later I'd see his sister, Adrienne, at our reunion, how awesome is that!
Lastly here is the one legged chicken, Emma and Hope named her Lola, and gave her scraps from our lunch. Maybe she represented the dignity and perseverance we saw in this tropical paradise, beauty in all the hardships, the hurricanes, the drought, the geopolitics of colonialism, maybe she's just a one legged chicken living for today just like us.
Thanks for reading my blog! today' post may be tangential to the usual focus on my creative work, but it's part of this painter's life!
