2019 - The Primitive Rite

How do you deal with not knowing?

I don’t know if I mean the unknown, but more the not knowing despite having the pieces of something in front of you but without a clear understanding of how (or even if) the pieces fit together.

It may just be a personal picadillo, for ambiguity, in situations where the overall control is out of my hands, makes me feel anxious.

Not my favorite mode of being. Maybe it comes with wanting everything to fit into a nice neat box. Or that all the variables are accounted for and thought through. Some of my favorite ways to work are puzzling through a problem, solving for the nuance. But not knowing something (or someone) can stomp through like a bull in a China shop…annoying.

I’m not even sure how to depict something like that, visually. Ambiguous, unformed. Even a cloud has form, it’s a cloud, a visually plastic thing that is at once a bunny, a car, and or a loved one’s face. And then, it’s nothing as it evaporates in the sun.

Maybe the perfect visual representation of ambiguity is a murmuration of starlings. Random, chaotic, twisting, wheeling. It’s ambiguous in its shape, where it’s going or in what direction.

Perfect chaos.

That kind of ambiguity feels beautiful. Random. It feels like a murmuration.

I think I love that idea of ambiguity.

I’m a few days late on this, but no one is really holding my feet to the fire for it, so it is what it is. This month marks another trip around the sun for me.

I’m two trips shy of a half-century flying around Sol, my fiery old buddy who’s gaze casts my shadow upon the landscape.

I have to admit, this isn’t what or where I expected to be on this trip. But, to be honest, I don’t think I had any real expectation of what or where I might have been.

This year marks a new landmark of sorts. I’ve taken up gardening turning the yard into a yargen—one part yard, one part garden. None of the plants are very mature yet, but when they are, I think it’ll look amazing. I blame the Brit Monty Don for my recent love of putting things in the ground and nurturing them to grow.

I say blame, but his infectious passion for plants was what I needed at the time I needed it.

Another thing, on this trip around the sun, is the relinquishment of an old vice. I can now find the answer to Adam Ant’s question of what to do when you don’t drink or don’t smoke. I was never much of a drinker, but the burning bush, that was another story. But that’s old hat now.

I think with this last trip around the sun, and the places I’ve gone and people I’ve lost has given me some perspective. What exactly that translates into will remain to be seen. For now, I plan to get my hands dirty putting some native species in the soil to do my part in rebuilding the eco system.

In some ways, I feel like I’m painting the foundation colors for a new body of work. Creating the undertones on the canvas for me to make something new. It’s primitive, and it feels organic like celebrating the rites of spring.

It feels like a primitive rite of passage.

Tag: 2019

Murmuration

Once More Around the Sun