While I Was Drawing

I got lost. Between one pencil stroke and the next.

I sit at my desk in my studio. I look down, pick up my pencil and draw a single stroke.

The edges of reality soften and blur. I can feel adventures and memories brush the back of my mind. Ideas and inspiration and endless worlds to explore and discover where the tip of my pencil touches the canvas.

Another pencil stroke.

I have found my way to a hidden place. There is a quiet magic here.

Another pencil stroke.

The studio is gone and I am stepping through an old brick archway into a garden on a late summer afternoon. The air smells of sweet freshly cut grass and pine trees, jasmine and honeysuckle.

I’m not alone. I can hear murmuring voices and music. I walk down a path towards the sound.

I walk past the pine trees and round a corner and you are here! Others who love this place too have come to enjoy this small garden gathering.

The afternoon lengthens into evening. We dance bare foot and sing along with the band that plays feelgood acoustic music while the children fall asleep under the trees. The dogs are there too, for furry cuddles and big wet doggy kisses.

There is a summer house beneath the old eucalyptus, a comfy place full of candles and cushions where we can read, or talk, or just sit and relax.

There’s no awkward small talk. We talk, or we’re quiet, just enjoying each others company. There are no expectations. People come and go as they please, wherever curiosity takes them.

Each path leads to a different adventure, a portal to a story where we can go anywhere, see anything, be anyone.

This pathway leads to the woods, where goblins and witches hide and make mischief among the toadstools and the bracken.

We follow a narrow trail beneath a canopy of trees that opens out to reveal a mysterious castle full of dark drafty passages and cavernous rooms, with mermaids in the moat and trolls in the turrets.

Another leads to the meadow where there are faeries hiding in the flowers, catching the last rays of the sunset in their wings. The dogs leap and bound through the grass sending the birds and the faeries darting for cover in the trees.

There are moments and memories, stories and songs between the blades of grass and on the underside of the leaves, inside the flowers and dancing in the wind.

Night falls, enchanting and ethereal. We lie back in the grass and watch the fireflies and listen to the music of the stars, the chirp of the crickets and the hoot of an owl.

I close my eyes and drift on the breeze.

Another pencil stroke.

The passing time is only evident by the glorious cramp in my fingers and the crack of my joints as I stretch. There are pins and needles in my arm and the edge of the desk has left its imprint on my wrist.

While I am drawing, I can go anywhere, be anything, explore places that only exist in my imagination. I can travel down into rabbit warrens on the inside of my head, through the magical wardrobe or back in time to moments and memories that were gone in the blink of an eye but linger longer on the page.

It’s been lovely to have you here on this adventure, I wonder what we’ll find down the next pathway.

Bye for now,

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