I have a box of Reeves water colours. Slender tubes with exotic names. Ivory Black. Burnt Umber. Raw Sienna.  I got them on sale somewhere, years back.

It started with a series of crow omens.

Look to the past.

Look to the past.

Hey. Hey! Look to the past!

OK, OK–I’m in my second Saturn return so looking to the past has become a daily exercise. I looked to the past, floating, as I am these days, in my watery dreams and visions.

I was done for the day. I had finally read last month’s British Country Living Magazine. I’d finished a Thomas Hardy short story. I’d washed the dishes and put some lettuces in a bowl of cold water to soak. My end of the day errands took me past the shelf where the box of water colours sat, waiting. Lurking.

Then I pulled out a sketch pad, dug into a box (conveniently on the same shelf as the water colours) for some decent brushes, filled a juice glass with water and pulled a plastic lid out of the recycling bin.

And I played with paint.  Swirls of green and brown and black. Rows of dots and slashes. Spirals. Snakes. Retraining my hand to the brush, my eye to the paper, remembering technique from days past. Testing, toying.  I wondered if I could still do a decent wash of color so I stirred the last bits of paint blobs together to make a greenish-grey and turned the page of the pad.

The brush wasn’t up to it–or perhaps I wasn’t. A rough wash turned into a tree trunk. A face–a punk Moomin, perhaps–sat at the edge of the trunk, a strange Green Man from the Way Back Machine.

Crows and dreams of water. Rain prayers and water colours.

Reclamation.

Restoration.

Renewal.