November 11, 2023: Leaf Day Ballet -

It's Leaf Day, so my 80 year old neighbor Susan was out raking at dawn. This was just a touch-up, since she had raked many leaves into piles already, had begun compiling a couple of weeks ago, and then had even put out orange traffic cones to guard the piles overnight and dissuade anyone from parking in front of her house until those piles are gone.

But more leaves had fallen overnight! They were stil falling!

I went out to join her, just companionably, because seeing Susan in the street alone gives me a pang. Also, she got to gesture around in dismay at the unceasing untidiness, and I got to remind her there will be one last Leaf Day in December, when the rest of the crop has fallen. We do this. She said Yeah, but clearly December is in the dim future, and of little comfort.

Leaf Day is Susan's glory. She doesn't put up Christmas lights or Halloween pumpkins, but she celebrates Leaf Day with gusto.

We stopped when the first trucks went by, and now I'm inside on the couch, watching their slow ballet. The plows go by first, a deep baseline with flashing yellow lights, and then the vacuum sweepers, and then the water trucks washing the roads clean for all of two seconds (because the leaves are still falling). The street perpendicular to our front yard is where the trucks make a 3-point turn and head back the other direction, so we get all the backing up beeps. It's quite a dance out there, and they never collide.

I really love watching the coordination, not because I dream of a leaf-free neighborhood, but because I delight in coordinated group efforts. 

Which ties in to my big realization about my recent endeavors. I spent a week in June at choir camp, and a week in September at a painting workshop. 

My big realization (note: I have only Extremely Obvious revelations) is that the Performing Arts usually result in some kind of corporate creation, a collaboration between individuals all working on the same THING at the same TIME. 

The painters at the workshop, in contrast, each worked on their own creation, at their own speed. I painted nine paintings in seven days (not all successes), while some people perfected three. Sometimes a few of us chose the same subject, but we didn't touch each others' canvases. Nor did we want anyone touching ours.

Well, the more arts, the merrier, say I. We need them all. I don’t think the collaborative performing arts are BETTER than the individualistic visual arts.  In fact, painting (alone in my studio, not sharing air with anyone) was a godsend during the isolation of the pandemic.

But I think I am essentially a performing arts person. I never get a painting thrill that matches the choir thrill. Maybe other painters are different, but I have never finished a painting – even one that pleases me - in a state of exaltation, thinking, “Made it!" Never happens.

Most of the time, I kindof-finish a painting thinking, “I could mess with this some more tomorrow, I guess…. I don’t know if it’s done or not….”

Also, I liked the other painters fine, but I am crazy fond of my choirmates. I think the collaborative creation, the group dance, makes a big difference.