Simon Levenson Studios

Things happen slowly in life…

Mr. Peters explained this morning on the way to the factory, the history of glass art from about 700 A.D. to modern times. It seems that after every advancement there was 200 to 300 hundred years before something new caught on.

The valley that we drive through to get to work was once covered by an ocean. When Mr. Peters has a glass of wine at night and in the distance he sees the lights of the cars and houses, he imagines it is the bay of Naples. His favorite place on earth.

The kiln is opened each morning and the “results” are seen and shown and talked about, sometimes at length and then another day of work and before Clause returns home to the kids, who are growing each year, the glass is put back in the kiln to cook.

Every Friday the Peters have fish for lunch. Every Saturday they have spaghetti with tomato sauce. This has been happening for almost fourty years. Saturday lunch is served at 1 or 1:30. By 12:00 Mr. Peter’s can taste it already on his tongue.

I lit a candle in the chapel in town today for my father. It has been twelve or thirteen years already. I lit another candle for everyone else.

Today is reunification day. Twenty years already. Mrs. Peters can remember it by counting how many  years it was before her daughters birth.

I was drawing in the hills two days ago and it centered me. My small black book with the soft cover and the yellow pages has traveled with me through Europe and is my friend. I feel at peace when I draw in it.

A woman walked by with a red umbrella in the rain and the wind and it wasn’t for a few moments that I could see the importance of it.

I saw two sheep on the way into town. I said, “hello ladies,” but there was no answer. Perhaps it is a language thing.

Mrs. Peters got a new car with six gears. She drive it fast through the sunflower fields and says, “It is so fast, I am almost flying.”