Posted by Susan Fischer on 8/27/12 5:32pm
Msg #432162
Repost of a favorite signing some years ago:
Such a day! A signing on the seashore. It was really oceaning out there today. Bumper-waves, crashing every which way; exited gulls fishing, and toes in the warm sand against a chilly sun's windage.
A kindly gentleman who paints in watercolors welcomed me in, and asked me to remove my shoes before leading me across the cold tile out to his odd studio: a glass-walled, sandy-floored, airy-ceilinged 'annex.'
There was a pot of Lapsang Souchong tea, that smokey favorite, surrounded by uniformly thin slices of lemon, cream and sugar comfortingly arrayed on the tray. The set, he said, was inherited from a great aunt, whom he adored as a child because she was a regal ballerina and taught him French. The driftwood table was amazingly flat and sturdy; his paint-spattered easel in the corner, a testament to his art.
He had been to this rodeo before, he said as he poured. Sailed this ship, been around this block. He liked brevity, the gist, the bottom line, and more tea. “In Art,” he said in a knowing baritone, “we manipulate space with emotional hues and forms; in Business, we hack and hew ‘forms’ to build spaces for Art.” While we laughed I took quick notes.
As I sipped, memories flooded back from High Teas with my grandmother at Tassy Drummond's spread – out on the small veranda, C Deck, she called it, overlooking the Shasta Valley and my favorite mountain on the planet - snapping back to the stack, and accepting more tea, I presented the first page.
We sipped, we signed and stamped, we oathed, and about half-way through, he excused himself. I heard the refrigerator open, then close, and he appeared with cucumber and artichoke heart sandwiches and colorful cotton napkins. Just like Tassy used delight in serving.
Resuming our work, he kept our cups hot and perfect; my toes delighted in kneading the warm sand. His eyes twinkled as he wove stories, like sonorous little paintings, between signatures on slowly-turned pages.
Mhm. As I knew it would, the marvelous company; the tea and lemon; the bright, crunchy sandwich wedges; those sunbeams and gulls’ songs and emery sands; that job came to an end.
At the front door, I discovered that little bench I used to take off my shoes and socks offered a mystery-mat that got all of the warm sand off - without tickling.
Simplify. With tea. Tell the truth? I didn't want to leave.
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