Name: Emily, the Most Magnificent.
Also known as: Emily, the Most Awful.
Age: I am a Splendid Youth.
Location: Terribly Terrific Texas! Coastal area. Lots of wading birds.
Just outside a humongous city. Lots of grackles and Laughing Gulls and gorgeous Green Anoles. It's very hot and humid most of the year and snow is a treasured memory. It's all cars and lights and industry, skyscrapers, starless skies, sweeping highways and a mocking bird in every yard.
I consider myself a writer, artist, and naturalist: those are my three main passions. It's a love for animals and nature that fuels just about everything I do. I am particularly interested in animal behavior. I'm the sort that likes to observe animals and take notes more than interact with them directly. I'd be a terrible vet, a lousy caretaker or trainer. But I've got a world's worth of patience, and I love to wait, and watch. I love to learn, and I'm very interested in the day-to-day lives of animals. How they interact with one another; how they interact with the world; what they do, and how they do it. I feel joy and love when I see them. They light up my world.
I enjoy writing both fiction and non-fiction, and when it comes to art, it's drawing and painting that I particularly enjoy. "Whimsical" -- defined by the Grand Deity Wiktionary as "given to whimsy; capricious; odd; peculiar; playful; light-hearted or amusing" -- is often used to describe my work, and it fits quite well.
I love stories. I'm not so much interested in the grand or the outstanding; it is more that I believe that small things are grand, that the everyday is outstanding, and that even though life is deadly serious and so often tragic, there are so many small moments of joy to be found. I believe that life is inherently beautiful and that beautiful is the wrong word, because beautiful makes us think of a pretty bird or a majestic stag, but the beauty I'm talking about has nothing to do with the aesthetically pleasant. The bird is beautiful because it is alive. And that life, that spark -- and the stories that surround it, the variability or the consistency, the odd and the strange and the miraculously mundane -- that's what I love.
Ahh Emily, You would make a good mindfulness or engaged Buddhist meditation teacher. So many of us have to practice and practice what seems to come naturally to you. Being present in the moment with the natural world is a treasure.
ReplyDeleteCan so relate to this:
"The bird is beautiful because it is alive." " And that life, that spark -- and the stories that surround it, the variability or the consistency, the odd and the strange and the miraculously mundane -- that's what I love".
Oooh, interesting! I'm pondering career options right now, so I'll add those to my list! I'm so glad you could relate to that, too. I forgot I wrote some of that, actually! Feedback like this is so important, it helps re-focus me when I get a little lost in the jumble of life.
DeleteI hope you and your kids are doing well! I still remember Joseph's skill at drawing, and Aaron's abstract paintings.
Looks like children did those paintings. There is nothing great about them
ReplyDelete