Returning to Potential

Earth Etude for Elul 27

by Akiko Yonekawa

As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I had simple plans for adult life: to be an artist, teacher, actor, and/or mom. In my actual adulthood, I have had occasion to be one of those things – high school teacher – though I no longer teach. As the years progressed, I developed interests in religion and art history, so for a while I wanted to be a rabbi and then a museum educator. I am, to date, neither rabbi nor museum educator. I had been convinced as a child that the goal of aging was simply to become a grown-up. As a bona fide grown-up, I am having second thoughts.

I spent many years in high school and college in dark rooms lit by slide projectors displaying art from various countries over many millennia. I studied abroad in Italy where I spent hours in churches with my neck craned back, admiring frescoes and marveling at architecture. I learned about color theory, composition, printing techniques, and photography. All to understand better how artists do what they do. In all that time, I held onto the idea that adult life was about being something. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be an art historian. I wanted to be a rabbi.

Now solidly in mid-life, I don’t want to be anything. That is, I am in the process of attempting to untether my identity from my profession or any of the other things I do. I am shifting my focus from being to doing.

Two years ago, I went to a nature journaling workshop with a local artist named Claire Walker Leslie that changed the way I see the world and put me on a path of return to a love I had as a child. For several hours, we talked about observing nature through drawing. We walked around a cemetery on a rainy afternoon drawing hosta leaves, ranunculus buds, ducklings, racoons, and treescapes. Most of my drawings looked nothing like what I was seeing. Especially the racoon. They were little more than scratches on computer paper – but my eyes were opened. I had spent years as an outdoor educator, but I had never seen nature the way I did when I was drawing it.

Two years ago I also left my job as a high school teacher. Since then, I have not had a typical job. I spend my time doing many things, chief among them nature journaling. With my sketchbook and pen in hand, I observe flowers in my neighborhood, trees outside my window, and birds perched on branches. Without the pressure of worrying about being an artist, I am free to do art – to turn to the natural world around me and return to my instinct to create.

Aki is a Jewish educator living in Massachusetts and California. She is a lover of adventures, Jewish camp, nature, and French fries. She has worked in a variety of educational settings including schools (early childhood through high school), camps, museums, and synagogues.

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