Work in Progress

That's what they say about life.

I seem to bounce back and forth between things. Between phases of belief and disbelief. Unwavering faith and utter despair. Trust and suspicion.

I spoke to two artists today and we talked about the way one of them would approach the act of painting not knowing what the end result would be. Deciding along the process of slathering acrylic on canvas what exactly she was painting guided only by what images emerged. How things would change along the way from whatever the original intent or idea really was.

Roses tight in the bud painted with a hammer, mountain top fires, and other such images haunt me. Stolen kisses amongst the firs. Cold fall rains. Wet dogs on beaches. Couches and movies barely watched.

(Given freely at the time. Stolen only in retrospect.)

With writing I am the same as that painter, at times not knowing what I have come here to say, to talk about. It is just a process of noticing, of taking note.
Of spilling with some measure.

I noticed today that the little metal tag on the hat that I've been wearing sea kayaking has become green with the salt in the air and spray of the ocean. Oxidized. I notice the way my face feels slightly frozen like it is after a visit to the dentist when I drink a glass of wine. During even. White wine more than red. Sparkling more than still.

I have forgotten how to trust that things are how they are 'meant' to be. Whatever that means. Like there is some grand pattern tracing and tracking the way my life should go. "Design".
Instead it is
Divergent.

We are pushed by tides and currents and suddenly caught up in worlds; bays, inlets that we did not expect to find or explore. And how these set us off on trajectories we did not see from the last leg of the journey. That we sometimes take the river all the way to the sea and find ourselves in salty instead of fresh. Or the opposite. Or without water at all, wandering in some desert we now understand as a vivid colourful richness of sun baked landscape, but previously only saw as arid, empty.

Feeling my way through this time. It is one of those when I cling to the decaying branch behind me, knowing it's truth but understanding that in order to move at all, release from the current state of unclarity is necessary. Letting go is critical. But I face thin air. No platform in sight. No certainty.

Other than a heart-in-throat drop into the unknown. I have made a business of wandering. So this new thing,
this staying put is showing me more about the unknown than the wandering ever did.