This is a new thing. To sit and look, which is to say, to gaze through my home windows, where I am lucky enough to see wild, evergreen branches and patches of sky beyond. This looking is not casual, but premeditated, where I slide my table place mat, ferrying my lunch salad to the side of the table where I can chew and observe the green and the blue and the brown through the glass. This looking, when performed in the summer evenings, bright until nine, when I curl on my bed and face the lifted shade in our second floor bedroom, when I hold a glass of something cold and stare at the scraggly branches that bounce, at the wedge of blue sky that holds hope, nourishes. 

This past May, my husband and I ventured on a somewhat spontaneous trip, a car ride of three and a half hours to a much-loved spot, a boutique inn overlooking a stretch of the Pacific Ocean, where I found another opportunity to sit and look. 

We go to this inn about every two-three years though always in January, the month of our wedding anniversary, a rainy month here, when the sun goes down around five. This year, we could not go in January but come May we took off, and during the ride I said, I hope there’s not a lot of people there. Part of the joy of the January trips was that we felt secretive, heading off to a beach at a time when rain and chilliness would likely be present, and also, the sand would be dotted with only a few humans at any given time–the other introverted souls wrapped in protective layers as the silver waves rushed in. Lucky for us, this Washington beach isn’t a swimming beach; the Pacific Ocean waters there are dangerous and cold year round, so noisy throngs don’t head there, even in May. As we climbed the steps of our rustic little inn and stepped inside our beloved room, and I looked out of the sliding glass door to our little balcony, I was greeted with something new: The grassy knolls that separate the inn from the shore, of which I only knew as yellow knolls, were, in fact, green in May. I had thought it was a type of yellow grass. I had been delighted by my yellow knolls, these magical, dry winter heaps, but here I was, astonished that such a vast change had been occurring year after year in a place I thought I knew quite well. In addition to that realization, I experienced something profound for me alone: For the first time, I was able to step out on the little balcony and exist on the other side of the glass. During our January visits, rain puddled on the balcony floor and chairs; never had I thought that space to be a place to enter; I saw no purpose for the balcony at all. Yet on this day in May, I was able to sit in a chair in the air, to place my bare feet on the wooden handrail, to wrap a wool blanket around my shoulders. I was able to sit and look, to think, to hear, to be.

In Volume 6, Issue 3 of Club Plum, we see familiar things in new ways. Maybe it is our once-artist aunt in her final place at the top of a hill, or our mother, gone from us now, but once spellbinding. Or Billie Holiday’s vinyl in our grandson’s touch, or how we perceive ourselves in someone else’s eyes.  

Come step inside this issue. Come sit and look.

Yours in words and art,

Thea

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