Portable Friends

A trip back to your home town makes you think about your life and about changes. How you've changed since you left and how the place formerly called home has changed since you've been gone. You find yourself asking, "Could I ever live here again?"

During the first visit back to the beautiful river valley where I spent most of my life, I knew that I belonged there but felt so homeless. Thankfully, each visit hurts a little less as I become more used to a different climate and lifestyle.

An artist who relocated to my current spot on the map approached the subject of finding your place in the community when you move. She asked, "How much should I invest in new friendships when I don't know how long I'll be living here?"
Good question, as I've never been in this position until now. When you've lived in the same place 'forever', friendships are formed gradually over the years. People come and go at intervals. You don't suddenly loose everybody — family and friends — all at once. Perhaps it's easier for people who move around a lot. Maybe they acquire a power friendship mode that kicks in and operates like speed dating — get out, find a bunch of people and sort through them quickly to find the ones you can fall in 'like' with. I wonder if people who make a lot of friends quickly have deep and long lasting relationships with them? Friendship Lite could be the answer.

Someone recently told me, "The reason it takes a long time to 'find your people' is because everybody's so busy with their own lives. They don't have time for new relationships and they already have a network of friends they don't see enough."

Can't argue with that belief. A network though..... I must be a minimalist in that department, never having had more than 4 or 5 good friends who would call me to say "let's go for coffee". There was however, a large cohesive community of artists spread throughout the area, all familiar with each others work and very supportive. I miss that.

During my working summer holiday, I was one of 38 artists who participated in a self-guided tour of 24 art studios. It was a great opportunity for (all too short) visits with family, two close friends and several former customers. I phoned one of them for permission to photograph a piece of artwork that she'd bought about 14 years ago. She so very kindly offered to bring it to the studio where I was showing. While she looked at my recent work, I was taking pictures and re-assessing the older piece. Unwrapping it and preparing for a scathing self-critique, I was quite surprised that I still found it to be a valid work of art and that I still liked it. The buyer concurred, "Yes, it is good, in fact it's my favourite of the pieces I own."

A side trip involved revisiting another work that lives happily in the council chamber of an administration complex. Now that I have it recorded digitally I'll throw away the dark and grainy photographs taken five years ago with a film camera. Those were the days when the results of my poor photographic skills came back too late for retakes.



Toward the end of the art studio tour, a friend and mentor presented me with a gift. Joseph Cornell: Master of Dreams by Diane Waldman. "I saw this in the book store and thought of you." What a delight! I smiled and maybe a tiny laugh escaped. The minute I saw the book I thought back to an online 'conversation' regarding the lack of scintillating art talk in my adoptive city and my craving for it. I was told that discussions about Duchamp and Schwitters of could be found 'only in the cafe society of Paris' and the best I could hope for was talk of gear ratios or hockey scores!


People said at every turn, "You really have to move back here". Due to limited job opportunities there, it will be several years (I hope, for the sake of current employment) before that decision can be made.

However, like poet Rod McKuen has found:

...along the way I've learned some things.
You have to make the good times yourself
take the little times and make them into big times
and save the times that are all right
for the ones that aren't so good.

That means mail-ordering art supplies from distance sources and pumping up the volume of the Gipsy Kings (they can really fill up a room when you're by yourself). I'll be working in the studio on a body of new abstracts and incorporating the found articles and trinkets that people brought to me during the tour.... "I thought you might like this for your art". I'm going to treat myself to a one person picnic lunch in the city park on top of the hill, then pick up a copy of Cloth, Paper Scissors and a cappuccino from the book store on the way home.


Also have to get that darn website going so I can have an online web launch party. Can you do that online? If so, you're invited!

As always, thank you for your wonderful comments and support. The next time I move house, you my portable friends, are coming with me!