Santa Fe street art August 2017
Becoming an avid traveler, going places I once only dreamed of, and doing it alone, has taught me many valuable things about myself but one stands out larger than all the others: I do best as a creature of habit. I am all out-of-sorts and finding it difficult to get back into a writing routine. What to do? Oh! what to do?
Well, two new excursions are booked. Oh bother! This is one lesson not learned very well but the excitement of driving 1000 miles one way to see my daughter in Boston (Scituate MA) is, well, all worth it. So I wait diligently for autumn colors and the wind in my hair!
As for writing, perhaps a few days will warrant something of value. If not, I am cool with that just as long as the view before me keeps on changing. Next up, U2 in Indianapolis.
Disappointed by a desire to evaporate, pray give me strength to stand against a false self forced on by others.
“Who do you see?” she who exists in a pool of rippling waves, sensing her life over. “I see failure,” the mirror retorts. She dips her finger to find an icy portrait bound by time.
“Still try dear friend,” a small voice quivers. “Find a piece of you to push through the depressed madness, the canned identity.”
Self-doubt relationships play in reality and fantasy. Ego stands disappointed by self-defeat, a desire to evaporate. Is anyone alive?
I really knew before I came for the first time last year that Santa Fe is magical. So magical that many eventually return and adopt and settle in a place that once was set apart for leisure. I am soaking it all up in 12 days. And twelve days seems long to be alive in Santa Fe but really not enough time… but it will do.
Yesterday was a walk along Canyon Road and to see it properly would take at least two days. The galleries are absolutely amazing. My favorite I saw yesterday was Gregory Lomayesva a Hopi/Hispanic painter and folk artist. His works have been at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C and Heard Museum in Phoenix as well as displayed in over 30 other countries (and may very well be there today).
I am now a proud owner of a piece of his folk art which is lovingly packaged in bubble wrap for safe travels so I will post a picture at a later date. Here are a few other pieces I did not purchase but would certainly love to give a home.
Fog in the mountains -this morning
were you thinking of me?
I wanted to let you know -this morning
burned away the fear
of never seeing you again. This morning
holds a promise and cloaks my tears.
The softness of the silk
wraps my face
and leaves a stain on my hands -this morning.
Church is poetry. Poetry is life. A life well-lived.
Christ before Pilate, David Aronson, 1949, Art Institute Chicago(I think.) We all like to believe we are the be-all to end-all solution to the adverse we face. Complex problems are produced by simple acts gone awry. Well meaning people get tangled in their desires that eventually overtake all soundness of mind. We become corrupt in thought not out of kindness but selfishness. I think I stand in such a bubble.
My bubble bumps my neighbor’s bubble and on and on the bubbles bump. In time the bubbles burst and the earth is covered in a sticky film that does not wash away easily. It takes effort to see clearly.
The reflection that digs into my soul has both a hatchet and a pick. A hatchet to chop off major faults and a pick to clear the crevices. What is left of a person who undergoes such surgery?
Many find religion compensates for the faults of man. Those who object I ask, would you die for another? Most likely yes. Would you die for a stranger? Possibly. For evil of others? Probably not.
What drives a person to hang for wrong deeds that are not their own? Was Jesus a narcissist? A delusional lunatic? In the minds of some yes. So those who have faith, the affect of such love, to believe they are forgiven, not forsaken to their own hands, rest easy. You too may be ridiculed, beaten in the market of ideas but steadfastness is a peculiar trait.
“Well, then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I myself have founded great empires; but on what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him.”
— Napoleon Bonoparte
World leaders such as Bonoparte are frowned upon in the “modern” age. Jesus is too. Or anyone who subscribes to such a philosophy. So the world waits until every knee surrenders to what? If not Napoleon or Jesus, who?
Look around. Is this world any more peaceful. Do platitudes of “Be happy” make us so? Will we follow anyone who promises peace? Are we really still so gullible?
1 Thessalonians 5:3 “While people are saying, ‘Peace and security,’ destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
What of the little wars within ourselves? Are these not battles we should wage? I profess they are worthy! Inner battles given to circumspect.
Those who choose to end their inner battle we fight for their freedom to end life? Why is life not respected? Is pain only fought with the sword? Where are we in their hour of need?
“It is a higher glory still to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword,” –St Augustine
