Advent Day Twenty Two, Q. Cassetti, 2011, pen and ink.Kitty is back with us to our happiness. She looks great, acts great and has her wits and act together. She has had the flu, so hopefully the time during her break will get her back to full steam ahead. She is all about costume design and vacillates between talking about the historical accuracy and that of sketchbooks and the work involved to make these dreams reality.
It is curious to me as this aspect of people working really really hard, and no one (meaning teachers) giving the student praise for the work is dumbfounding to Kitty. No one praises the student for doing the work—or not doing the work— Its the end result— right? When the character is on stage, in costume, performing…one doesnt think about the hours, the budget, the planning. One thinks of the reality of the moment, the aspect of time suspended—-the believablity of the story and character. That is true with what we do. It is not the hours of study, residencies and practice that we go to the doctor for, but his excellence, his knowledge base, his expertise, his assurance. When we get a carrot from a farmer, we do not think about the hours of planning, preparing, plowing, sowing and cleaning that goes into his job. We focus on the perfection, the tastiness of the carrot assuming (if we even think about it) that all of that effort and time went into the preparing and growing of this vegetable. I think this whole shock of the value of time and effort is a good part of Kitty’s second education, the one beyond the books, tests and projects. The reality part of her education which it seems she is getting a good dose of. Hard work is only recognized by those working hard…and not those who just see the end of the process. It is the journey that is the hard part…not the final goal. That is the shining part that the world remembers while we focus on the path, the work, the time—and the continual education and skill building along that route.
Speaking of skill building, I am feeling pretty smart as I did some technical problem-solving this morning and have the things that were driving me nuts yesterday solved and moving forward. As one faux techie to another, I do not know what I would do without the web and the amazing resources there to help us solve these maddening issues with bits and bytes, electricity and usb ports. If you just peck away you can really find your answer or ten out the in the wild cyberworld.
The day is racing away. I have grabbed some wonderful details from the Liber Floridus (per my last entry) just to share with you the wonder of this book.
