Still here

There were lots of conversations in our family yesterday about the rapture.  Mostly joking, of course -- exposing some amusing ideas of what heaven might be like -- but my younger daughter insisted on calling me at six and staying on the phone until she was certain I hadn't been carried away.

... which probably explains the origins of this image, which evolved yesterday afternoon with no great sense of gratification on my part.  I never set out to depict the rapture, and I certainly didn't intent to create a sort of "beam me up, Scottie, there's no intelligent life down here" image -- I didn't set out to depict the rapture at ALL -- but that's certainly what this looks like.

That's the problem, I suppose, with allowing creative energies to flow through us; we might not always like what emerges.  Sometimes, of course, there are moments of illumination, but there are also the times when all that happens is you get to see what's been on your mind -- and it may not be all that pretty.

But here's a question: what's so bad about that?  The answer, I think, comes from today's reading in The Promise of a New Day:  "We falter and fear our mistakes, certain that they will enlighten our fellow travelers about our inadequacies."  And don't you ever wonder -- what would be so awful about that?  What -- or who -- on earth ever insisted we had to be perfect, that every work of art had to be inspirational, that every poem had to have the flawless perfection of a gift from Mary Oliver?

I found myself, in an email to a friend yesterday, suggesting that my own temptation -- when things aren't going well, either in an organization, as an artist, or in a relationship -- is to walk away or shut down.  And certainly to stay with something that isn't working can, at times, prove foolish.  But it's equally misleading, I think, to assume or require that things will always go well, or as we wish; life doesn't seem to work that way. 

What I think I'm learning, over time, is that it may be true that walking away will be the ultimate response.  But it's in the act of staying with what is -- however difficult that may prove -- that the most learning happens.  And when and if the time does come to go, the clarity you get from all the time you spent trying to make it work can actually make that ultimate separation almost easy.  If you can say "I gave it everything I had to give," then you won't be wracked with guilt or loss in later years, wondering what you might have done differently -- or trying to re-create what you once had that's now, well... gone.

... and if those observations spring, at least in part, from time spent yesterday evening watching old episodes of Ally MacBeal and Friends, in which old relationships -- abruptly ended -- keep re-surfacing and causing problems, well -- there you have it: a secret vice revealed!  I walked away from my TV set somewhere early in the 90's, and now  -- thanks to Netflix -- I get to see what I missed.

Hmm.  Does this count as a guilty pleasure?  Or does it just say that if you fill your brain with sludge, it shouldn't surprise you that sludge is what emerges...