Artless

What does it take, to make art? I grew up in a family of Artists, the true kind, the ones that others would look on and note their talents. Formally. They are all so very legit in their Artist-ness.

As for me, I have never felt that I merited the label, or the capital A on the front end. My painting skills are fractional, I can't recite a line or act my way out of a paper bag, I sing only when I can avoid feeling watched and heard. And yet I have chosen to make word-art of a sort from that which grinds into me, the small pains of life as well as the ones that are overwhelming and show-stopping (but are impressively inconsequential in the grand scheme). These words seep out between the awkward silences that have lengthened from months into lifetimes, from the footprints I pad into sandy or rocky soil in my travels. From the ruins of my reckless ways and the beauty that surrounds each step taken on this lifeline. I allow the words to spill, at times blindly and without thought for those who may read themselves into my plotlines. I push the publish button hastily, as if getting it out on the ether-webs has an urgency. As if I might rid myself of my limitations and failings if I click fast.  I am painting pictures with the mass of raw words that gurgle up to meet my sense of things. To make sense of the stuff that does not. I divest myself of the responsibility and hard work of letting go by simply releasing another slew of text. Hoping to create something intricate and marbled and a bit indecipherable, meant for one and for all.

Beyond me, my musings may take on meanings known only to each reader. Like letters found years after the writing, unsent, bound up with string, and tucked away in a box in the attic. A cowards craft. Like posters pasted on neighbourhood lampposts, they are indirect, and undirected. The craft of the unrequited. Free for any who would read, perhaps never truly hitting the desired mark, but hitting many unintended ones.

Maybe I have wielded this virtual pen like a weapon, or have used it like some impetuous kid denied, throwing myself on the ground and kicking my feet in an articulated tantrum. Screaming at trees.  Seeking some way at least to be heard.

Weather

This afternoon as I drove home rain fell from a blue sky. I wondered how it is that it can be so utterly sunny and clear, and yet here I am witnessing the droplets come down from behind these rapid-fire wipers. I fight the sense that I can be experiencing these two realities at the same time, as if the weather has a responsibility to make some sense just for me. It's what i seem to expect, to wait for the skies to unify above me so that I can be less conflicted. But I am caught in the sun showers between two weather systems.
I am stepping into nothingness if I try to avoid it, and perhaps even more so if I face it head on. Maybe that is just as it should be, my own idealism and willful blindness slapping me in the face after all. My inability to choose, my stubbornness towards the things that do not line up in my myopic view. It's not like you will catch me when I fall, because I have somehow made my own fate out of this morass. My own emptiness sprawls before me, creating a void, an intense place of not knowing what next or where to go. I have not unwoven myself enough to follow this new path being offered up. Not yet. And time runs out.
Cracks have begun to form and the truth leaks out, confused and still shackled. I am compelled by pain, some of it mine, perhaps more awake than I have been for months. Not just going along for the ride on this ocean swell. The wave is breaking, I sense I am being washed through the fog into shore. I fight it still, resisting the inevitable pull of the next leg of this journey. Whatever it may be.

(June 13, 2016)

In Place

Thrasher Cove.

Yesterday I paddled up this familiar coast. This time on the outside, bobbing between the shoreline rocks, wind and waves. I have been here before, but I travelled by foot, deep in the woods, climbing and descending the dark forested trails of memory. All to arrive at this same beach. This is where it began. Despite the fact that the mode of travel has changed, it is the same, and I can feel that we still reside here, ingrained in the sandstone cliffs at our backs, cradled in the bed of love and reverence that started us on the path. I am still in awe now of the soft beach, the green smells on ocean breeze, the life that pads to and fro on the sand between forest and water, seeking morsels to feast on. This intertidal place on the edge of a temperate spruce and cedar cathedral.

It is here that I remember. It is less than three years, it is more than twenty-five. A place where teeth were cut on wilderness departures.

I think about the other end of this Trail. So close by water, but days on foot. Where we sat side by each on the log, etched forever on the emulsion sheet of my soul. Whales cruising by, you awash in a  childhood memory of loss, the tannin-stained river flooding and gurgling beside us, the dark skies of late fall starting to build on this horizon. Perhaps this was the point to being here; when we return to things that seem lost but are never truly so. These places are here to remind us that they are filled with spirits, words and looks that defied capture, eons of the comings and goings of creatures human and non. Melded together in an energetic soup that contains all things worth keeping. All things worthwhile. We can live in the present and move forward but when we return to places that  have contained us, and contain us still sacredness alights upon the breath of the sea, it's moving shores teeming with light.