Grays

We’re all complaining about how gray, gray, gray it’s been—the endless rain and cloud cover; the days that just never get light. But I am tired of complaining, too, and have drawn up a list of grays that aren’t depressing. Pleasing grays, soul-satisfying grays—

the luxuriant gray of Himalayan cats

oysters, especially baked three ways, like that place in New Orleans which is probably gone now

Earl Gray tea

a dappled gray hunter named Tapatia clearing a jump

gray-green olive trees on a hillside in eastern Crete

a crisp pinot gris from Alsace

my wooly gray lambswool sweater, I must pull out to wear with turquoise

dried sage leaves

elephants

the middle name of my Bonnard quest heroine, Isabel Grayfeather Girard

my true love’s dear, silvering hair

gray fog covering Venice, yes!

image: Nebbia a Venezia: Riva degli Schiavoni. Foto di Giovanni Dall'Orto, 10/12/2007

Thanks for Thanksgiving Week (Friday)

I am thankful for Pierre Bonnard, and for the joy his paintings always give me, and the inspiration for the novel I've written about that joy and life-transforming color, Nude against the Light.

image:  Pierre Bonnard, Nude against the Light (1908)

Chicago postscript

But after all, my Bonnard wasn’t there.

It’s what Bonnards do—vanish into museum storerooms, go travelling suddenly across the world, without warning, without apology, taking the light with them like stained glass when the sun is gone from it.

It is a worthy occupation chasing them; something I’ve done for more than half my fifty years; a journey I’ve bequeathed to Isabel, the heroine of my Bonnard novel Nude Against the Light. Something that redeems her life.

image: Pierre Bonnard, The Seine at Vernonnet