It's the New Year! I'm ready for it! Let's go! (Let's not use any more exclamation points until the next paragraph.)
So to celebrate I am giving away the original signed sketch for 'Running Home'. (Pictured below) To be in the drawer you need to be a follower of this blog and leave a comment after this post. Here is the exclamation point : (ready?) '!'
So, Happy 2011. I was going to give you a run down of the good points of 2010, but there were A LOT and I didn't want to bore you. I just hope 2011 has as many. There were some sad times too, we lost one of our dogs, and sadly I think this year we may lose another ...it's hard knowing the heartache is to come. But that, of course, is life.
I managed to slow down a bit this last week and think about the coming 12 months. I watched a lot of good stuff on the BBC, cooked, saw some friends, slept. I have been working on the art showcase piece for the coming NY SCBWI conference. It's more involved than anything I have done for a while, and after this post I am back at it.
Last night I watched an episode of 'Wild China' a documentary (as per the title). It's stunning. (BBC). They featured a tribe from way up in the North East. In the mountains. Hunter gatherers. Riding out on a sturdy pony was one of the elders. At 82 he was off hunting in the higher reaches. His weapon? A beautiful golden eagle perched upon his forearm, as easily supported as if it were a canary. The eagle, trained from a chick, will give the man another 5 years service (10 in total), and then be released into the wild, as the other eagles were before him. Agree with this or not, it was a beautiful thing to see. At 87 the hunter will not take on another bird. He will retire from hunting with eagles. And this made me think a lot about our society. At the age when we stop doing things, when we start to say 'I am too old'.
Personally I never see retirement on my horizon and I don't think practising artists and writers ever do. I hear friends saying what they will do when they 'retire' and I guess I am lucky to be doing what I want to do until I fall off this plane of existence.
But I look around me, and I see so many people in their early sixties and seventies and they are ready to go - indeed seem obsessed with it. What makes us like this? The media? Societies expectations? Prescription medicine? Loss of hope?
America has been good to me, but sometimes I feel I too am being sucked into the maelstrom of relinquishment. It is youth that matters and not the wisdom of years.
As I watched the wise old man on his pony, proud with his eagle, I remembered my own words lately, 'I feel like I am getting too old to ride. I've lost the urge.' What I am is getting brainwashed and lazy.
This spring, I get back on those horses and I ride. And that goes for the rest of the issues I have too!
So there is my new year's res.
I hope you are inspired to take life by the horns too.
Go get 'em Floyd
Hazel
AKA The Wacky Brit.
The Bedside Table: New books on order!!
