Mondays come around with shocking regularity.

Don’t you think so too?

For some, the weekend is a time to slow down, to rest a bit from the work-week, to have a bit of fun. For me, weekends are hard, harried living. Oh sure, it’s all good stuff. But come Monday morning I feel I  need a weekend to rest up from my weekend. It has felt like this for quite a few years now. I look forward to Mondays so that I can return somewhat to a more purposeful rhythm of art and life. Weekends often feel like driving a stick shift in the highest gear possible and your car is still screaming.

Monday always breaks into my thoughts with a regular theme. I recognize and notice this as a lifelong theme–one of feeling bound, constrained, restrained, hemmed in, held captive in such a way that I long to break out, bust loose, run away if only for a few hours, or possibly several days.

If you flipped through my sketchbooks you would see page after page of drawing all the way to every edge of the paper, as if my pen longs for there to be more paper on which to dance. There are also pages where I’ve drawn myself a box in which to contain my lines. Rare, however, are the drawings in which I’ve stayed within the lines. My pen longs to bust out, go through those self-imposed boundaries and frolic free. These are some of my favorite drawings.

Is this merely a drawing device I like to employ? I think its something more–a visual representation of what I long for in my life. I wrote the following poem several years ago. It was one of the first written about my favorite Field and Lane up at the top of my neighborhood where Mr. Whicker’s home and farm resides. Walking here often gives me a taste of that freedom I long for…to know no bounds…to run and play and frolic free.

It’s amazing how drawing can both reveal these things AND offer an answer. Drawing your life in a sketchbook truly is boundless…just turn the page when your paper runs out. There are NO rules one has to abide by in making marks…anything goes!

The only problem is trying to catch it all, to drawcument ALL of it: cousin sleepover with youngest, JDRF Walk with youngest and several of her friends, oldest daughter in for the weekend with two other friends from college, worship, lunch out with a friend, etc.

That’s what Mondays are for…to slow down a bit and draw my life, or at least parts of the harried weekend so I can remember it and see how lovely it is and in doing so…to live…boundlessly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whose fields these are…

 

Whose fields these are I think I know…
His house presides o’er fence below.

 

His cattle say their grace each day
Content to watch and eat and stay.

 

The fields, they hum a beckoning tune-
To roam, to fly, to surf their dune,

 

To live with graceful, swaying ease,
To know no bounds, nor responsibilities.

 

To run and play and frolic free,
To chase the butterfly…or not…as you please.

 

Walking away, their song remains,
Though I am bound for my life’s restrain.

 

And as I enter my home’s gate,
I bow my head to plead for grace…

 

To watch and eat and yes, to stay;
To boundlessly live within the fray.

 

-jpe