The Chops and Changes of Time

"The Chops and Changes of Time" - oil on paper, 21 x 21.  (To purchase, click on the image, right)

Since the only test of truth is length of life, and since words survive the chops and changes of time longer than any other substance, therefore they are the truest. Buildings fall; even the earth perishes. What was yesterday a cornfield is to-day a bungalow. But words, if properly used, seem able to live for ever. VIRGINIA WOOLF

Oh, the lifespan of words.

Words from long ago, ages and ages before, still rolling around in the modern world creating thoughts and emotions and AHAs and oh-OHs.  Woolf is right.  But sometimes, the words that linger aren't an AHA or an oh-OH but an oh, no.

The Chops and Changes of Time

You know the ones - we spoke them when we didn't mean to, or didn't mean them, or didn't know any better.  Or they were spoken to us - in anger, in frustration, in hatred or without understanding or compassion.  Those words seem to live forever, too.

I'm trying to be better with words.  The words I speak and write, the words I read, the words I hear and mostly, most importantly the words I say to myself on the inside.  If words are like construction materials - ​surviving longer than any other substance - then what are my words building?  The inner visual of this city of words under construction is enlightening. Methinks the city could use some soft play spaces.

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Big thanks to everyone who rescued art from "gesso murder" (as one collector brilliantly called it) during the once-a-year save-the-art-from-the-gesso sale.  My heart is full knowing all the paintings that whispered (or shouted) are heading off to the place they truly belong.  

​And stay tuned for the last Reader Giveaway of 2024 - the twelfth month of giving away art! Woot!