THE VOYAGEUR

Bleu De Chine, Bruno Catalano

I recently stumbled across an evocative sculpture that immediately captured my attention and my imagination.  The artist had created a series of these “imperfectly beautiful” travelers as part of a commemoration for Marseille, France in 2013.  Bruno Catalano explained his unique work below:

“From years of being a sailor, I was always leaving different countries and places each time and it’s a process that we all go through. I feel like this occurs several times during life and of course everyone has missing pieces in his or her life that he won’t find again. So the meaning can be different for everyone, but to me the sculptures represent a world citizen.”

Viewing art for most people is a very personal experience and a piece can evoke completely different reactions and impressions from even the artist that created the work as Catalano observed.  I’ve had the good fortune myself to travel extensively and build a home in three different locations, but my reaction to these sculptures was quite the opposite.  In my view, all of these adventures and experiences of knowing a wide range of individuals has actually completed me.  It’s been said that we are not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body.  Our life’s work is to develop the soul and make it whole through our interaction with our creator and the world’s inhabitants. 

These sculptures have an obvious surreal and ethereal appearance due to the omissions of vital parts of their bodies that seem to levitate in space.  Their baggage adds the needed length to support and give them proportion, but more importantly, it conveys that they are on a journey.  And everyone carries a different collection of baggage on the journey.  Still, the gravity defying fragility of these figures is mesmerizing.  They are beautifully incomplete.  They demonstrate that even a broken soul can still stand resolute and move about this broken world with courage and faith in the future.  Perhaps we’re wired to subliminally perceive that this imperfect world is not our final home and we are all just sojourners renting space, regardless of where we keep our stuff.     

As we answer the call to adventure, emerging out of a worldwide pandemic, our own heroic journey enters the final phase of moving from our potential to full actuality of our true self.  Life is a great adventure as we follow our bliss in pursuit of the divine that is within all of us and the fulfillment that the adventure brings.  Hopefully, we will contribute not only to our own positive character development, but that of our fellow voyagers as well. 

 "We're all just walking each other home." --Rumi

EARLY MORNING STILL LIFE

Still Life, Jamestown, NC

 A laser beam of early morning light made it’s way through the trees and the edge of a window blind as I read today’s newspaper.  It caught my attention as it was encapsulated and reflected in a thin crystal disc for only a relatively few seconds.  Fortunately, I was holding a device that was also able to encapsulate and reflect its “good morning” presence before it vanished as quickly as it appeared.

THE PHANTOM TOYOTA

Drive Thru, High Point, NC

I normally head out on a Saturday morning for a mind cleansing drive after picking up a rejuvenating coffee.  I lingered too late this morning and my first choices were slammed, but McDonald’s had recently installed a two-lane drive thru that looked reasonable.  They still aren’t as efficient as Chick-fil-A, but it’s an improvement as I watched a driver in the other lane with their arm out the window pointing at the menu while giving instructions to the formless Oz wizard inside the audio speaker box.

As I waited behind a seemingly driverless Flying Dutchman Toyota with a missing crew aboard, I did notice a small dog’s head randomly appearing over the headrest on the passenger side.  This ghost vessel did haltingly move forward when the traffic alternated between the two lanes toward the single-lane cashier and food delivery windows.  However, there was always a full car length left in front of the phantom land yacht.  Consequently, two consecutive vehicles from the other lane entered the single merge lane while I was blocked from placing an order once I finally crept up to the order station. 

There can be only three plausible explanations for what I observed this morning as I foraged for caffeine:  1) This car was equipped with the latest and greatest in driverless technology that still had a few bugs to work out in drive thru lanes or 2) The yippy little dog in the passenger side was actually driving a European import and ordering a supersized McTreat or 3) A very short human that actually moves among us was driving the Phantom Toyota and could not comprehend the intuitive concept of a fast food drive thru.  

We’re doomed.      

APPARELED IN CELESTIAL LIGHT

Celestial Light, Vail, Colorado

William Wordsworth's 'Splendor in the Grass' is the poem we hear in the 1961

movie by the same name.  Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty starred and Wood was

nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Beatty's girlfriend.

 

The poem is from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early

Childhood, which begins with the majestic:

 

  There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

  The earth, and every common sight,

            To me did seem

        Appareled in celestial light,

  The glory and the freshness of a dream.

 

And who can forget Natalie Wood struggling to read it in

her English class, then hearing her recite it again, this time much wiser,

at the end of the movie?

 

FIELD OF DREAMS

Chihuly Dreamscape, St. Louis, MO 

Field of Dreams, American Heartland

There’s been a lot written and discussed about the dreams we human beings have in life. Many of those dreams of course get translated into prayers. And much has been written about unanswered dreams and prayers because the answer can be no, or maybe, but let’s wait and see what happens. In the movie Field of Dreams, the old country doctor gets another opportunity to turn back the clock and fulfill his earlier dream of spending his life as a professional baseball player instead of a health care professional. When confronted with the chance to replay his life differently, he still chose the healing path instead of the base path. If he had gotten a hit on his one big chance at baseball, many people whose lives he had touched in such a positive way would never have known him. 

 That scene brought back a childhood conversation I had with one of my uncles after we had all played a pick up baseball game at a family reunion. Even then, my dad had displayed a proficiency at shortstop that was still impressive. I was told in that short exchange that my dad had been asked to try out for the Saint Louis Cardinals farm club. The scout hit him scorching line drives and grounders for a couple of hours with none getting past him. He then offered my dad the chance to leave home and join the baseball club. But times were tough, and he passed on the dream, stayed at home and helped the family. When I questioned my mother about the decision, she noted that baseball simply didn’t pay the kind of money in those days that it does today. 

 That major decision in my father’s life quite probably resulted in our family’s creation. And mine. It’s good to have goals and dreams in life, but when life throws you a curve ball, it just might not be strike three. It might be ball four and a pass to begin a new path around the bases that leads to a new home. Only later after his too early death did I begin to also understand the time and patience he spent with me to teach me the baseball skills he had acquired. I didn’t become a professional baseball player either, but I learned that we’ve got to work hard at something to be really good at it, sportsmanship, a love for athletics, how to be a team player, developing lasting friendships with teammates, the thrill of competition, how to be a good winner as well as a good loser, and the love of a father to impart his dream to his child after he had chosen another path so that the dream remains alive. 

 And like the movie, the best times involved the simple act of playing catch in the backyard. It’s a very human act of “I give to you and you give back” connectedness, many times discussing something about life and many times in serene silence, with just the sound of the rawhide ball hitting the leather glove. The final act of redemption in the movie unfortunately doesn’t happen all too often in real life. The prodigal son gets a second chance to say, “Hey dad, you wanna have a catch”? And his dad replies, “I’d like that”.

THE COLORING ASSIGNMENT

 

Coloring, Wrightsville Beach, NC

We were on vacation and having dinner outside on the pier of a great seafood restaurant in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina with my four-old grandson.  A smart, well-trained hostess will bring along a coloring sheet and crayons with the menus when seating an active child.  The image on the coloring sheet was a beach scene with sand, ocean, sun, palm trees and sea life.   He dove right in coloring and was only slightly distracted by the hovering pigeons that were waiting for the opportunity to swoop up any food that might hit the deck.

He did a good job completing most of the image and then asked Papa if I could help finish the sheet.  Of course, when a grandchild asks for assistance, the answer is automatic!  I filled in all but the sky and water, since the color blue had already been used for some of the other details. 

But when I returned the sheet, I was rebuked for not completing my assignment in the sky and water!  My coloring critic was not happy with the task entrusted to me and it was promptly returned to my embarrassment in such a public setting.  So, I immediately went back to work on my coloring art with a renewed fervor and commitment I hadn’t mustered since retirement!

I finished the work by carefully staying within the boundaries and returned it to my young mentor for another critique.  And then I breathed a sigh of cautious optimism when I saw his eyes light up as he scrutinized my coloring talent.  My daughter asked how he would judge my artistic work on a scale of one to five?  Then the surrounding tables fell silent and the pigeons stopped dead in their tracks as the verdict was contemplated.  Finally, after an anxious eternity the judgement was rendered with a resounding 10! 

I was so relieved and excited to receive such a prestigious ranking in Olympic coloring that I almost spilled my gin and tonic!

P.S.

My blog has now recorded over 100,500 page views!

THINGS YOU CAN’T GET BACK

Sunset, Wrightsville Beach, NC

The toothpaste from the tube.

The opportunity once it’s gone.

The words uttered in anger.

The day after the sunset.

The life as the spirit leaves.

The planet that can’t recover.

The human race that can’t coexist.

VANISHING FOOTPRINTS

 

Footprints in the Sand, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Vanishing Footprints, Wrightsville Beach, NC

Many of us are familiar with the poem Footprints in the Sand, but have you ever considered what became of those footprints after the winds or waves followed after them?

I was following after footprints in the sand at daybreak this morning and the waves made short work of erasing them. But those footprints in the poem have left an indelible impression on the world for 2,000 years!

AGING LIKE SEA GLASS HAIKU

Waves and salt water,

Tumble and turn new fragments,

Aging the sea glass.

Time is critical,

To the slow transformation,

Sharp edges are smoothed.

As the glass weathers,

Surfaces become frosted,

Provenance assured.

Life transforms us all,

I want to age like sea glass,

And roll with the tides.