Transitory Dilemmas
Here, in the Northwest, we are launched into the most beautiful end-of-summer I can remember. It comes like a great salve, and warms up the concrete, and there are little brown leaves all dried up and skirting about, and this warm glow, of late summer, a melancholy glow, of the end of things, and the end of things, seems often to be warm and red in nature. Like a dying sun.I have no work- paintings or drawings- to show for the summer. Its been building, and working, and drinking more than i should, and trying to get though what proves to be a difficult and confusing time. Not really confusing, but certainly Difficult. I am not great believer in free will, i feel more tossed about by events than i feel that i am the tosser. I react, i contemplate, i think, that would be a nice poem or picture. And maybe i scratch one out. Had i an ounce more gumption, and a pound more of practice, i could start getting where i felt like i knew something and did something worthwhile. Maybe.
Instead, project lying everywhere, A to do list a mile long. Guitars and accordions and amps and piles of drawings and tools and plywood and lawns to mow and motors to fix and 20,000 books stacked in piles with poets alphabetized, and a car blowing blue smoke and a shop to finish and another house to remodel and parents that are old and dying, and pictures to take and poems to write, and the trail to bike on my old 3 speed that i just built a wheel for, and songs to memorize so i can back up denny when he sings Autumn Leaves, and bees to take care of, and wood to stack, and stairs to build, and the constant complication of relationships and marriage and what it all means to be 51,,,, and in the center, the very, very center.... there's what?
Is there anything?
I am distant from the happy Buddhists that i studied with, and feel as if i have abandoned some dear friends. But i am a sinner now, not at peace, not meditating, thinking pretty much of me and how it is i am going to be content and happy and not leave this damn world frustrated and mystified like my father. Good luck. I am on his path.
You get a certain number of summer days. Then at one point, you don,t. At some point, September 19 comes only once more. You don't get another one. Is that like eating a chocolate from a fancy box? Enjoy it, move on? But never again? And then, no more. Well, its this no more that dwells on me now, and for drinking too much and not exercising enough, i feel OK. Time will come, when i wont. So whats the deal? What is it we are here for?
And painting? What could be sweeter? I hope to be back at it. It is simple and straightforward. And oddly, i've learned, that it communicates something to other people, whom i assume are in the same transitory dilemma as i, though with different ways of saying it. But i guess they see something there. I'm not too mystified by it, really, its all paintings of naked girls and woods. Naked girls, I like, they are evocative of something ancient and vital. Woods, I like, woods speak out, and are thick with meaning, again- its about the vital powers, the life force, and by that i dont mean life, i just mean aliveness, of our experience, and the transitory experience of the great fabric of things, the color of a river, or a cloud, and how it exist without us.
