THE MISTS OF TIME
October 22, 2012
Last Friday we drove up to the New Paltz, Stone Ridge area of upstate New York to spend the weekend with dear friends. It’s an area I know like the proverbial back of the hand, having lived there, on and off, for most of the 70’s and 80’s.
It was a gray, misty day with intermittent rain, which at this time of year is one of my favorite kinds of day in that the sad gloom of the atmosphere is eradicated by the vibrancy of autumn’s colors which, rather than being dimmed by the absence of sunlight, seem to glow from within their own glorious rays.
It reminded me of how hard I’d looked all those years, years of driving over Mohonk Mountain down to the valley where my salon was located. Seasons and years of driving the same road until it had the familiarity of a vein pulsing on the back of my hand as I clutched the steering wheel, navigating the treachery of the mountain in mists and snows, rainstorms and sun-drenched summer evenings. And all the while looking hard at the woods and fields and distant mountains until color, light, form and texture imprinted itself on my retina and beyond, to my mind’s eye where, later, after work, after dinner was cooked and dishes washed, after the children’s homework, I would steal away to my studio and wait there until the image resurfaced, identifying itself through the paint tubes and brushes, the paper, the canvas and, as I always felt, beyond, to the other side of the wall where the muse whispered her instructions to me.
I do not miss that area of the world, loaded as it is with the litter of failed marriages, addictions, custody battles and a sort of endemic, native depression one finds in small American towns trapped in the valleys between mountains, as if to live in such a place is to dwell in the deepest of ruts. So, no, I miss none of that. But I do miss the intense engagement in the relationship between art and nature as expressed through the medium of paint.
In fact, for someone who has a background in dance and music and art I do often wonder why I settled for the maddening and often thankless medium of writing. How much easier it is to invite a person to the studio and have them “see” all at once, the completed canvas as opposed to asking for the ever diminishing willingness it takes to “read” a whole book – or even, these days, a short essay. And yet writing is the one art form I just can’t put down, having been “at” it now for 45 years.
Do I think I can express myself more fully with the pen? Or is it partly the convenience of not having to lug a piano or paint and canvas around? Never mind the ungodly effort it takes to keep a body tuned for dancing!
The mist was thick and low when we reached the crest of Mohonk. A truck had miscalculated the turn and ended up splayed halfway across the road, its rear end stuck in the muddy field. I could have stayed for hours, left the car there and tramped off into the mist where I could have been surprised by deer and looming color.
Maggie's photo
After 20 minutes there were perhaps as many cars at a standstill, the drivers in various stages of impatience to get moving. I walked along the road a ways, looking hard into the woods. On the way back to our car I decided to look at the drivers and saw that they seemed to be limited to two choices: exasperation, or interaction with the tiny screen of a cellphone. Either way a narrow existence.
When we finally arrived at our friends’ house the mist was turning toward the darkness of night, the fire ablaze in the hearth. After unpacking, the four of us sank into the couches and looked at a painting of mine they’d bought 29 years ago. It has sat above the fireplace all this time. They say they never tire of it and often disappear into it. And I, too, having visited this house many times over the years, still sit and look at the blues and greens and grays and blacks and white of brush-stroked paint that all those years ago arranged themselves into the impressionistic wooded background before which a meadow is inhabited by the ghosts of cows and deer.
I remember as if it were now, the sensation of those creatures appearing beneath my hand, knowing then, as now, that they had naught to do with me except in the willingness with which I had invited the muse.