With extra time in my schedule and blue sky outside, I went out to the harbor near Long Wharf. People in twos and threes sauntered by, gazed out at the ferry boat traffic, sat, talked on their phones, in one case stretched out and napped, wandered on. Planes ascended from Logan. Gulls cradled on the breeze. The water sparkled. I sat with my notebook open trying to sketch people in motion-- frustrating endeavor.
Suddenly a flock of third graders ran, hopped, swarmed into the area, full of energy, shouting to each other to look--at what everyone was looking at, announcing to each other that they were going to do--what everyone was doing. Lining up to look through the pay-for-view binoculars, jumping down steps, clustering around the teachers and chaperones, chasing each other, chattering, the children, especially the girls in pinks and lavenders and sky blue and yellows, were an aviary, wonderful to watch, impossible to sketch.
As I was trying to outline a teacher heading the expedition, one of the girls came up and said, "I like your drawing." It was, in fact, an awful sketch, but that compliment was a wonderful gift. She went back to the others and I thought: This has made my day. I'm old, male, alone: an object of aversion, if not suspicion. But a youngster has spoken to me spontaneously, and remarked on what I am doing.
But there was more.
The girl came back with a friend to show her my (embarrassingly bad) picture, then there were three, then five. There were little girls in front of my bench, beside and behind, all telling about their recent art project when they made Mona Lisa contemporary and gave her a job, and about visiting the Paul Revere house and the roles they each played in a drama they enacted there. "It was so dark and the floors creaked (wonderful word) when the people on the top floor walked."
Slim and open-faced as the daffodils in the planters distributed around the wharf, they were individually unique and, en masse, beautiful.
We talked about Paul Revere's 16 children, and about the 10 O'Neill sisters who used to march down Commonwealth Ave every Easter, side by side in matching outfits, tallest to shortest. There was a swirl of telling like the chirping of birds. One of the chaperones, a mother I think, came over to check on who I was, decided I was harmless, and remarked how lucky that the day was bright and sunny after the rain of the week.
In the end, after I had mentioned how hard it was to draw moving people, three girls, arms over each other's shoulders, no, four girls, one kneeling, posed in front of me while I very quickly caught their rough outline. Much laughing, much admiration (they were too happy/excited to be critical), and then I said I had to go. In fact, I was afraid I couldn't sustain my part in the encounter much longer. While it went on, it felt like headlong downhill skiing.
That these twittering charming girls welcomed me, a stranger on a bench, touched me very much. It was a moment of being caught up in the clouds. The obvious evanescence need not be mentioned; indeed, so what? The meeting happened and it was glorious.
Suddenly a flock of third graders ran, hopped, swarmed into the area, full of energy, shouting to each other to look--at what everyone was looking at, announcing to each other that they were going to do--what everyone was doing. Lining up to look through the pay-for-view binoculars, jumping down steps, clustering around the teachers and chaperones, chasing each other, chattering, the children, especially the girls in pinks and lavenders and sky blue and yellows, were an aviary, wonderful to watch, impossible to sketch.
As I was trying to outline a teacher heading the expedition, one of the girls came up and said, "I like your drawing." It was, in fact, an awful sketch, but that compliment was a wonderful gift. She went back to the others and I thought: This has made my day. I'm old, male, alone: an object of aversion, if not suspicion. But a youngster has spoken to me spontaneously, and remarked on what I am doing.
But there was more.
The girl came back with a friend to show her my (embarrassingly bad) picture, then there were three, then five. There were little girls in front of my bench, beside and behind, all telling about their recent art project when they made Mona Lisa contemporary and gave her a job, and about visiting the Paul Revere house and the roles they each played in a drama they enacted there. "It was so dark and the floors creaked (wonderful word) when the people on the top floor walked."
Slim and open-faced as the daffodils in the planters distributed around the wharf, they were individually unique and, en masse, beautiful.
We talked about Paul Revere's 16 children, and about the 10 O'Neill sisters who used to march down Commonwealth Ave every Easter, side by side in matching outfits, tallest to shortest. There was a swirl of telling like the chirping of birds. One of the chaperones, a mother I think, came over to check on who I was, decided I was harmless, and remarked how lucky that the day was bright and sunny after the rain of the week.
In the end, after I had mentioned how hard it was to draw moving people, three girls, arms over each other's shoulders, no, four girls, one kneeling, posed in front of me while I very quickly caught their rough outline. Much laughing, much admiration (they were too happy/excited to be critical), and then I said I had to go. In fact, I was afraid I couldn't sustain my part in the encounter much longer. While it went on, it felt like headlong downhill skiing.
That these twittering charming girls welcomed me, a stranger on a bench, touched me very much. It was a moment of being caught up in the clouds. The obvious evanescence need not be mentioned; indeed, so what? The meeting happened and it was glorious.
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