The tale of the tortoise and the hare

Above: A younger version of myself about forty years ago.

Above: The present and more mature model at Seattle's Wing Luke Museum
of the Asian Pacific American Experience during March 2012.

As a news moment this one wouldn't ordinarily merit any attention. But it's immensely satisfying as an individual to realize after poking through several boxes of duplicate photographs taken over the years (with the ultimate goal to finally downsize and purge the excess)  that forty years have passed between the black and white snapshot which appears at the front of this blog submission and the color photo which follows.

How clearly I remember my mother saying to me that given the fact we  both knew I wasn't say going to to paint New York or any other big sized town in the art world, in light of my obligations and duties it was better to forget about making time to work on my picture making skills until the day I actually had leisure hours or a large bank of days, weeks or months when the demands of a job or family were for the most part non-existent. 

I admired and respected my mother. Mom was always good at juggling time. In comparison I am a poor multitasker with then undiagnosed organization skills, distractibility, anxiety and depression. On the freeway of life I drive a Model-T. So I long despaired about not being able to set aside the blocks of time I was fully convinced would be required for me to make decent progress in the area of my artistic preferences.

Fortunately I was blessed in other areas with a real life script which has allowed a impatient Baby Boomer as myself to learn that falling behind where I thought my peers had already headed at such an early age was one of the best gifts I could possible receive. 

I needed extra time to figure out how to be comfortable in my own container dealing with my own pre-conceived laundry list of internal roadblocks. Once I got the concept I was easily able to allow myself far more room than I was originally prone to do.  Eventually I understood  small spaces here and there ultimately add up to something, and something is so often all that we need.

To paraphrase an Aesop's fable once or twice there's a blue moon and green turtles really do find themselves within hailing distance of a small but friendly crowd by the finish line.  And I content myself to let the rabbits nearby run as they will. Because all that is required is to stay focused.