There is a moment, near the end of Everyday Matters, when Mr. Gregory speaks of overcoming his discomfort of drawing in public. It was awkward he said, to have strangers approach and ask to see his drawings. He felt pretentious, shy, inadequate, etc. Gradually, though, he began to allow others to see what he drew, to see as he saw. In return, these people would generally talk to him about themselves. They would tell stories of how they saw New York, of missed subways and late night pizza and occasional tragedy. "They were giving me the gift of themselves," Mr. Gregory says.
Everyday Matters is a sketchbook. There are drawing of shoes, medicine cabinets, and tins of ravioli. There are watercolors of Death Valley and Paris. Doodles of cows and farmers. Drawing, Mr. Gregory tells us, is not simply a matter of making marks on a page, but a way of seeing. A way to appreciate things as they are. That is all and everything.
Everyday Matters is a diary. It happened that one day Mr. Gregory's wife fell on the tracks of a Subway. The train did not stop in time. She survived, paralyzed. Confined to a wheel chair. Life, as Mr. Gregory knew it, was over. Things were tough on Patti, too. Everyday Matters tells of Mr. Gregory's thoughts regarding the revolution of his world, the bitterness at chance, the weariness of condolences from friends and family, and the impossible necessity of moving on. Patti is still his wife, after all. They still have a son called Jack. Things are what they are and that is the way, he knows, they will stay.
Everyday Matters is an exercise in recovery. Recovery of momentum, of life, of the world. Mr. Gregory has written another book I've read, The Creative License, in which he instructs his readers how to see. To look at a tree, for example, and not see a "tree", but see something gnarled and wavy and very much unique unto itself. This book, Everyday Matters, is where, it would seem, that the motivation to see came to Mr. Gregory. There's a remarkable sort of poignancy to his drawings, whether they be of cityscapes, of Big Ben or Sixth Avenue, or of the small objects that surround him, of, yes, everyday matters: toothpaste or ravioli. His son. His wife. There is a quiet urgency throughout. An unspoken need to hold onto what reality there is, and to somehow learn to appreciate it simply for the miracle of it existing at all.
And it is that need, born out of tragedy, which is Mr. Gregory's gift to us, if we'll only take the time, a moment, to see the world as he sees it.