I keep dreaming of a screened-in porch with a view of a lake or something, forgetting how much I love to draw buildings. Especially in Brooklyn, the borough of brownstones and churches. This is a view I’ve been admiring for the 25 years I’ve lived here, and finally I took some photos and drew it from a couple of angles in a 5×8 inch sketchbook.
Maybe the reason I love drawing buildings is because they gave me my first sense of place. I was five when we moved to New York City from a suburb of Chicago. Until then, I took my surroundings for granted and gave them little thought. I could have been anywhere for all I knew. Then we came to Manhattan, and that night when the buildings were all it up I thought we’d moved to fairy land. I think part of me has always remained in that first glimpse of a magical place. I’ve never lost the habit of looking up in wonder. It might be the moon or the clouds or the trees, but more often than not it will be made of brick or stone.
I don’t think we ever forget what first sparked our imagination. These days it’s my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Like the tops of these two churches on Seventh Avenue, one on the corner of Seventh Street, the other on the corner of Sixth. I love how odd they look together, almost fantastical. Maybe not quite fairy land, but somewhere far away. Much farther away than Brooklyn.
Oh, to die in the night…
(first you have to die in the night)
to awake like Ebenezer
at Christmas.
Just get through the eve
live through the eve
by dying, in the night.
The Divine Feminine wears many faces… One of my favorites is this copy I made of the Mask of Warka, known as the ‘Mona Lisa of Mesopotamia,’ and the ‘Lady of Uruk,’ sculpted 5,500 years ago, one of the earliest known depictions of the human face. She who see’s all, without judgement, daring you to peer into her bottomless depths.
Does the World Need More Paintings? No. 
Artist and healer Louise Oliver, of 
Louise explores the obstacles she faced in her personal healing process and the part art played in her understanding of the subtle energy field and releasing memory, among other things.
On a recent trip back to London I visited most of the places I used to live and took pictures of the doorways. It had been four decades since I last trod those particular pavements, walked up those steps, slid my key into the lock and pushed open the door to places I once called home. These flats and bedsits were all in Chelsea or Pimlico, Kensington or South Kensington. The few times I lived in North London were brief and unhappy, and not worth the trouble of going back. My home is now Brooklyn, and I hadn’t been back to London in twenty-eight years. All I had was a week, so each foray into the past had to count.
I took the tube to Kensington High Street and walked the short distance to St. Mary Abbot’s Church. For some reason, probably because they had the same name, I thought the hospital might be behind the church, so I began walking around the block. There was no sign of it. I even enquired in a shop. The women proprietors were middle-aged and elderly; surely they would know where the hospital was. But no. They’d never heard of it. So now I Googled it on my phone, which is what I should have done in the first place, because now I learned it had been torn down, replaced with luxury apartments in a gated community called Stone Hall Gardens nearby on Marloes Road.
I walked up and down Marloes Road, looking for something, anything that might stir a memory, but recognized nothing. Though the gateposts and part of the brick wall from the workhouse had been left standing, I didn’t remember them from my brief stay. Not to be outdone, I rang the bell and asked the gatekeeper if I might come in and look around as I’d once been a patient at the hospital. But he said no, there was nothing left of the old place now. I know when I’m beat. Time had moved on without me. Coming back at all after twenty-eight years was an accomplishment in itself, and I’d have to forget about St. Mary Abbot’s.
When I was back in New York the visit seemed worth writing about. The doors that were still there, and the one door that wasn’t. St. Mary Abbot’s Church would be a stand-in for the hospital that once bore its name. I began a drawing of the church. I’d write a little, then draw some more, and meanwhile I thought to look up the old hospital again to get my facts right. Now that I was more relaxed on my laptop at home rather than wandering around Kensington while I anxiously Googled the history of the hospital on my phone, I noticed the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki. It seems that Hitchcock used the exterior of St. Mary Abbot’s Hospital for footage of the character Blaney (Jon Finch) entering and then escaping from the hospital in his film, Frenzy (1972).
I had actually seen the film on You Tube not long ago and quickly found it again. I fast-forwarded, and near the end, an hour and twenty-some minutes into it, I saw the entrance to the hospital. There was no mistaking it. The shot took place at night and it was dark, but I recognized the spacious, empty parking lot. (It had been night when I was admitted there too.) 
Though it was a bit fuzzy, when I saw the plain, modern-looking, unfussy entrance, I recognized it at once. It was more than I expected. I happily finished the drawing of the church, thinking all the while of God’s Grace…
’s Eve in the late 1950s, when you were too young to look back and not old enough to look forward, but you remember those magical nights when you could stay up till midnight in New York City. When you and your sisters and brother were given pan lids to bang together like cymbals as you leaned out your ninth story window protected by curved window guards. You didn’t need special hats or blowers, just a couple of ordinary kitchen pan lids you will bang and clang together as if to say, Hello world! I’m here! I exist!
