I am sitting in our apartment with my morning coffee watching the weather come in. It was very warm over night and we still have winter bedding in use, which means I was too hot and didn’t sleep well. We had a couple of warm spring days and I’m not on top of things getting cool and rainy again.

I open the computer and started to read the Marginalian newsletter, which I’ve subscribed to for a number of years. The title of this post was in the body of her explanation about how small our thinking is compared to what actually happens in our lives. The imagination of Life is greater than the imagination of those of us living, and it made perfect sense to me. That is certainly part of the explanation I have experienced in my life. A case in point is the fact that I am talking to write this blog post due to my right hand losing dexterity. It has put a greater amount of pressure on my left hand, which is suffering a bit because of it, and I’m trying to take the pressure off my left hand by learning to do things differently.

We may, of course, have expectations and beliefs about what is likely to happen. But they are simply imaginative stories to which reality bears no obligation, stories negating the fundamental fact that the imagination of life is always greater than that of the living.

One of our daughter’s good friends, and our ‘surrogate son’, sent me a link to an app called Wispr Flow. This app allows me to speak, and it records what I say with unexpected accuracy and clarity. It has also saved me a lot of time since I’ve started using it. I expect it will save even more time as I get better. I’ve only just started using it in the last 10 days.

In the explanation when I downloaded the app, it said that it would save time because, even for good typists (which I’m not, and I was only average before the and troubles), by the time I proofread and fixed everything, it would take me a long time. Maybe 45 minutes or an hour each day to write a single email, and that’s a fairly average one. What this app has done is made that whole process much faster, and much easier on my hands. I’m already seeing the difference in the things I’m able to get done during the day because I seem to have a bit more time. Painting is one of the things that I’ve noticed I’ve suddenly been able to find an hour or two for, several days this past week, to practise. I’m doing an online course that teaches me how to paint abstract landscapes. Landscapes seem to be the favourite subject of my previous work with pastels, and I haven’t lost interest in the topic, but I realised when I started trying to use the pastels with my left hand, it just didn’t seem that interesting to me any longer. At first, it was novel, and I was pleased I could do it, but something inside me felt like I needed to do something fresher, a new challenge.

Then I came across a young woman artist from Melbourne who put a few demonstrations on YouTube about how to use a water-based paint called gouache. I haven’t used gouache since I was in art school 50 years ago, but I realised that that might be something of interest. I watched a couple of her demonstrations and got out the few gouache paints that I had in the cupboard and brushes. With just a few tips that she gave, I was able to do something that interested me, excited me even.

Fairly shortly thereafter, I came upon a course called Loosen the Landscape, which is an online course that you pay for. It is taught by an artist who paints landscapes, but they’re very loose, and she was willing to teach people her approach. They’re very good, and I’ve watched about half of her lessons now, but because I’ve been doing art most of my life, I could put it together pretty quickly. Whether I’m able to do something any good is a whole other issue, but I could put the lessons together pretty quickly, and so I began.

I’ve only had a few sessions on my own now, but the latest one this week has given me some hope. I’m using my left hand. I’m using the gouache paint, and I have donated all my pastels and materials to the local group that teaches underprivileged people. I’m on my way.

I thought you might like this little update rather than me telling you about the other side of our life, which is dealing with health issues, especially for Don. We are only 7 months into his 2-year treatment plan for lung cancer, and things just evolve and are different all the time. None of it is easy, especially for him, but for me either, because I love him and I hate to see him having to go through this. Like everything, we’ll go through it together, and hopefully I’ll make another post soon. If I don’t, it only means life has given us something else beyond what we imagined for ourselves.

(If you’re curious, this text of this post only took me about 20 minutes to dictate, and I’ve only made about five corrections. They were very minor: spaces and things like that. It took about another half hour to put together the rest of this post.)