Dinner this evening at the home of Gary Faigin and Pamela Beylea with students from the three ateliers. Met a bunch of great people as we watched the sun set over Ballard and lifted our glasses to Canadian Thanksgiving and spied on the neighbor’s Mooncake Festival. Food was fantastic – I need to get the recipe for the lemon-almond cake which was to die for. Got to see a bunch of Gary’s art up close and learned many times over how much I still have to learn. I drove home deep in contemplation of what art means to me today and what it could mean in the future. I know I need to spend lots more time making art.

Fun fact from the evening: Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was actually an accomplished artist, who was trained in Europe, but left art to become an inventor.

“The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions, This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters, meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.”

From Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
, pp. 148-149.

This quote reminds me of the Wordsworth poem, The World Is Too Much With Us, which Juliette brought to our lunch time discussion at the Carkeek Park picnic. It is so interesting how Nin and Wordsworth, separated by almost 150 years, have such similar perspectives, and how both are even more applicable today.

Staying up late tonight to smoke some tri-tip for tomorrow’s Atelier picnic at Carkeek Park. If the park were an outdoor restaurant, the menu would say, “smoked tri-tip on a bed of red leaf lettuce with marinated onions, blue cheese, walnuts, and cranberries, tossed with a red wine vinaigrette.”