April 7th, 2024
Life has become a stewing broth mixed of both certainties and uncertainties. Something which seems obvious as in the nature of living but which I might have concluded in years past was not so clear. I find myself caught up in the beauty of nature and the vigor of living. Everything which touches my eyes seems more saturated and all that which is out of my control seems bleak and uninteresting. My focus seems more resolute.
I think at times I may have believed that life could be a series of certainties like a job, a credit card payment or a group of friends. I've found even the things I may not have been very sure of, like family, my own perseverance and my capacity to find gratitude in life to be less of a sure thing that it seems to have become now. I find that the choices and the time we spend energizing various things seems only to oxidize that good and the bad as much as we spend our time on it. I have spent much time on the good lately.
There is something to be said for finding the quiet of reflection which now occupies me as I sit here on a small desk which I did not buy in a new apartment, with plants and the wafting smells of some spices which I did not curate. There is a large window and a river below. Quietly in the apartment above are a mother and her youngest daughter and they have welcomed me without cause for much distrust into their home as a paying tenant. It is interesting to me to consider what wildness and risk they may have taken in housing a young man such as I, without much more information than the nature of my profession and the character I excoriated during the pretenses of our introduction.
Living with two strange women has proven much less of a crazy thing that it may have had the opportunity to become. The sweet giddiness that these two women seem to hold over life despite the things which have not gone their way is endearing. The mother, is building a house. She seems ecstatic that she's found someone of knowledge who may be able to guide her in her journey. As much as I would like to help her, I cannot seem to fathom what consequences exist between people who live together embarking on this union which may have many different outcomes. I am not sure, without my own licensure and the ways I am held back by my current employer how this might forsake us both should anything go wrong. I do not plan to design her home in any lasting way because the restrictions around the shore-land zoning of her property seem insurmountable for the time I have available to me. The youngest daughter, she is one of four children, lives in a state of humorous distaste with the state of things, and yet she has her own giddiness of life and a joi de vivre. She has some vigor and I find her strong and cynical but not in a way which shuts me out.
I consider the loves I have lost and gained since I last sat down critically to write in the way I do now. The woman I had loved seems gone now, but not for her ghost who reminds me of our love in the depths of my slumbers on random days of the week. She visits me kindly and with warm embrace reminds me that it was not all for nothing. I have lost friends who I come to see how they are their own enemies, fighting egos and destroying their own stability for some validation. You can bring a horse to water I suppose.
I see even more how people are caught up by their own blindness. People spend so much time trying to run from their own weaknesses that those obstacles just seem to block them forever. I wonder often what kinds of events are required in ones life to force them to accept what they know they should improve. Perhaps it is a mixture of routine and being forced by some outside force to shift mindset.
Survival and Love, they seem desperate things we as a society are far from lately. People do not need to survive, they only need to be alive. People do not chase love they chase affection. Perhaps in the dilution of these words in our language, and not some greater societal change, is really what makes these things matter less. Survival is no longer life or death, it is acceptance versus isolation. Love is not commitment or passion, it is something of validation and requirement. Who could say either way, my mind wanders now on these topics. I find it is much easier to just focus most of my energy toward action. I chose constantly to love, to be grateful, to find cause for connection and not discord and yet it seems there are volleys of vitriol which still seem to find their way to my ears which I struggle to understand and chose not to spend much time attempting to.
The house I live in is uphill from a river and the sun comes streaming into my room from the west. The afternoons are lazing and quiet and the town is just a short walk. There is a pub with some distasteful bartenders and a Mexican restaurant which I like very much. The library is nearby and the historic homes are very lovely in their stark and rigid orders.
My sister asked me today if I had ever felt wildly nostalgic in a very sad way before. She asked me out of the blue and I sent her some poetry which I think most explains these feelings. The Germans seemed very good at defining such an emotion but in English we do not very well have such a good transcription of a feeling which seems so universal.
I have relinquished much of the nostalgia that I may have had in the past. I do not cling to the past in the ways I have. The future seems much more exciting.
I wonder now, should I have my own house soon and my own quiet solitude to reflect and draw and paint when would I start to crave the kind of action which is only possible in the most degenerate places on earth and the most stricken with problem and chaos. The serenity and innocence of this small town capture me in a way that is linked to both my past and future and which I find it hard to imagine much more of a life than I have now besides perhaps more money and my lover sleeping soundly by my side at night. I have become everything which I, in the last decade, seemed very unsure of its possibility. I think there is beauty in that coming of time and place. Somehow now I see more clearly how much more is possible. I have eclipsed a peak and the larger more exciting one looms before me.
I have the love of a few who value me and wonder and care. I am employed in a profession I love doing drawings and projects which are increasingly time consuming, rigorous and interesting. I have the attention and affection of a young woman who is unregulated and passionate. These things give me so much intensity from which to draw on as the source of my life. All the uncertainty and certainty of both these things give me vibrant colors from which to continue to paint the canvas of my life moving forward.
The English sensibility
I am nearly brought to tears
The green store front
In northern New England
It reminds me
of my sisters in London
The times we may have spent here
They smile and glee
At the Irish pubs and English sensibility.
They skip and jump to run and leave
I imagine them reading
On the street.
They observe and reflect just as me.
What wonder I’ve found in my boring scenes
Thinking about my sisters
Their love for life and seeing sights.
They yield me wonder and excitement
In my dull mundane thought trees.
I stop at signs and look at the lake
The snow is leaving,
The air is fragrant and seething.
Until next time,
photos by Sean McGadden
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