The Loneliness Project: In Pictures Part I

It is the absence of something, most of the time something we took for granted for a long time before we realize it's gone. The swing settles in the family tree and only a random breeze will wake it from its slumber.

I remember the cool green grasses and clothes blowing across the long lines of rope making shapes and patterns like ghosts. I remember the simplicity of a great blue sky and a child's mind full of opportunities.

There are so many times we fall off the swing, we skin our knees and assume that no one is coming with the clean washcloth or the gentle encouraging voice; we grow up. We become self-sufficient, we are taught to ignore the swing, the green grass and the great blue sky as if they were just childhood foolishness.

We barely realize they're gone but the child inside us still yearns to stop, to seek comfort, to search with an explorers heart for wonders among the grass and secrets in the woods.

It is this loneliness, missing a child that always found time to play, to look up to the sky in search for something great. How I miss the swing and the tall willows throwing viridian shadows, I consciously aspire for my own resurrection.

The green lawn, the red and white shed before it was an eyesore, back when it had a purpose. We would have family dinners in the backyard, the kids would take orders and there was a barbecue fired up, it was summer.

I remember a large gathering of people, usually Easter, after church we'd sit outside. It was back before mosquitoes became the deadly creatures they are.

I remember plastic chairs and long white plastic table clothes, laughter and drama-it was a family gathering after all.

Now the family is scattered to multiple states. Many of the members I remember are dead, some still live near the same town but we are all separate.

I miss the bond of family, even if what I remember wouldn't match reality. I"m sure there was more tension among them but I was young. I had the privilege to grow tired of having guests.

I would love to sit in my Aunt Ann's kitchen listening to the old woman with stories and small talk. I would enjoy sitting in the living room with all the men watching sports and talking trash but time moves on and we don't realize the connections or their significance in our lives.

The Precarious State of Loneliness

There are so many more like me...but we are all separate,

How uncomfortable it is, longing for contact
and yet unable to fathom its joy
To seek solitude while aching for connection
it's the most difficult state as nothing seems to feel comfortable
time is slow and yet fast and random simultaneously
I have lived here
I have driven a long road, alone, missing others
and yet insistent on my own solitude
is it the soul's nature of knowing its own state
but curious for another?
Fear keeps us
separate.
Awkward we are souls in transition.
I forced my way through loneliness
until I grew comfortable with myself
it was only then that I could fathom
interaction
and it's joyful conclusion...

The colors of humanity
ebb and flow just like the seasons
but they are to be shared
not squandered
our voices are like the fleeting colors of autumn
how they linger among the tangled limbs
to grow as a wonderfully colorful
landscape
they become stories among grasses
ghosts in the shadows
until they settle on stones
and sleep like whispers...

we were never meant to be alone
we are all notes in a beautiful song
so when did we stop singing?

The Intricacies of Light: A Second Skin

Joy is a child's unique expression of the world. The intricacies of faith, hope and seeing with honesty and simplicity restores some of that beauty the world teaches us to abandon.

A creative must bridge the gap between being an adult, realizing and abiding by wisdom and seeing past that which is discernable. It is only than that we realize our innate simplicity and can allow the child to coexist with the adult.

No one ever chooses to be ordinary or common but often safety is what keeps us reasonable and comfortable. It is tearing away the skin, with as much violence and tension as it would literally seem that we find our new self and the rejoice of our child inside that never died but was only sleeping.

The summer rages through breathless days, cicadas buzzing in yellowing fields, the sunflowers giving up all of their sweetness and color. A heavy haize taints a blue sky as the birds scavenge for anything that's left alive.

The heat breathes in and out like a beast from a forest. Seeds settling to the parched earth, all that can be done, is done. Even the normally chatty wren or the raucous mockingbird keep themselves in check.

Only the young birds, bluejays and cardinals hop from dried up nests desperate for the promise of seed, the sunflower complies.

I watch every day unfold like a novel I've almost memorized. The morning breeze, cool and insistent that the sun is on its way. The crows in garbled conversation speaking in tongues, arguing like old men on the street corner.

The nearby roads and even the highways hold their breath. It's 9:AM, the stillness stirs the birds from hidden roosts. Squirrels chase eachother with jobs to do before the sun burns away the hues of the sky.

As afternoon unfolds, the highways start breathing, a heavy breath of cigarette smoke, car exhaust and the dust from deserts of Africa-the sky turns yellowish and gray. The cicadas are insistent, sighing as if disgusted with summer-the heat is inevitable and none of us have any breath left.

I've watched this scene again and again, I longed for the evening when all sounds are hushed. When all the cars have gone back to their homes, where everything is calm again.

It will happen again tomorrow until summer loses its battle and like the blooms of summer sunflowers-Summer will relinquish its breath and we will all take a deep sigh, a sad but necessary breath and a sweet goodbye.

Just a glimpse, but I can barely remember what it looked like before. Near signs that insist no littering, there are piles of trash, families, big loud families, walking along a crowded road where no one seems able to go the speed limit.

It's hot, even the promise of the waterfalls don't offer much. If you could see the full view of the photograph you would see a crowd of people in a hot, murky pool, the water is not really hot but it might as well be.

I went there with a purpose, I wanted to get some background information for a painting I'm reviving, I'm getting back to water, trying to see what I used to see. I am still left to guess on the details.

This place is nothing like I remember, there are crowds of people, herds of families carrying floats and chairs-they all look exhausted. The water is yellow instead of its normal blue and greens, it's so murky you can't see beneath the surface.

There are tents on concrete, families on the edge of grass and road, instead of being more relaxed I am more tense and exhausted from the heat.

I'll go again, but not until summer is over. I will wait until nature revives its original state-some of the trash will remain but at least the crowds will shrink, maybe than I will get the details I need for the painting.

No one remains inside, that stone wall seem useless at best. There is no glass hiding the self, no locks, no mechanism to deny access.

Nature embraces the soul. It's warm enticing arms become a fortress given away. The self erupts, becoming the truth it needs to be. I am eager to know my second skin, to realize the possibilities of hope, of tomorrow embraced with fingers reaching from paradise to insist that I was here and I am still alive.

My window is open, my doors wide, I hope to allow the possibilities, people, goodness to meet inside.