Cara Clara
Another month has slipped by, time turned languid and indistinct in this new coronavirus world where all the usual markers have been erased. Instead a constant drumbeat of “news” – the number of cases here and there, the ever growing list of the dead, the let-up/lockdown now grown into a numbing rhythm, all of which collude to seem to make time and its previous cadences evaporate – it simply slides by like the smooth waters of a river meander.
Here in America we are treated to a cascade of social and political shocks as the world most people imagined to be stable and constant instead crumbles at our feet. I more or less foresaw all this, so it comes as no surprise for me. For most the people I know, and for the broad populace here, and I think across the world, it comes as a rude slap in the face of expectations. The future is not at all what most had imagined it; our complex high-tech world is not doing as it was thought it would, warding off all things difficult while giving us endless toys. Instead it is collapsing, and exposing all its inherent weaknesses.
The last time I wrote I’d just been busy working on a new film here in Walkerville. After Gary left I set it aside mostly, and aside from stray thoughts in mind, I have not yet returned to it. I must shoot some more before the end of the month, when I imagine I’ll be leaving. Instead my mind has lost focus, and I’ve mostly wandered doing some pastels, a bit of writing, playing my songs, and letting my mind meander in its own meadows.
Photo: Pat Munday
Photo: Pat Munday
A poem from some weeks ago, when the colors began to change:
autumn’s russet symphony
ochre oxide tawny tan yellow red
ground to earthy dirts
intaglio of leaves
skeletons embedded in decay
flung to the wind
fall
haiku lives
I read in the news that Covid-19 is surging again in Europe – France and Spain especially, though not so strongly at the moment in Portugal or Italy. Of course in the USA we are “leading the world.” To say it seems clear that the coronavirus will persist in changing our world, seemingly for the worse, though as I wrote in my blogs back in March, perhaps in some necessary, if difficult to accomplish ways, for the better. It is too early to tell how this will all play out, though it is clear what seemed the future last autumn is no longer so.
Like you, Clara, my life is hanging in a kind of limbo, a bit directionless until the outlines of our shared “future” reveals itself more. For the time being I “tread water” just to stay afloat, which in my case means I remain in America, drifting eastward. In some weeks I will drive to Chicago (in a rented car), to stay with friends there – a month or more? All unclear. I hope to get back to Europe, though seemingly not until next year.
And I suspect your life is similar, the “future” held back until things begin to clarify. Your name is in there, “clarify” – become clear, find clarity. I hope you do find that, and that you are able to be happy even in the foggy nature of our present.
dead birds fell from the skies
littered the ground
sang no songs
but muted though they were
they told a story
That is what I am trying to do here in Walkerville – to find the story, or really the many stories of this place. It is a poor town, mostly filled with poor people (30% in “poverty”) with all the usual problems which this brings – sadness, drinking and drugs, violence, a bent psychology that afflicts almost everything.
Houses along Daly Street, here in Walkerville.
I hope in these days you are able to carry on with whatever it is you wish to do – your school is meeting or not? Or is “virtual.” I have seen notice of your film and look to find a place on the net to see it, but so far I cannot find. It would be nice to be able to see it. One day, perhaps.
Here is a short film I made a while ago – perhaps I already sent to you? – made with an artist, Danila Rumold (see her website at http://www.danilarumold.com). She had sent me some photographs taken out the window of an airplane as it landed; I saw them and immediately saw a film in them and asked her if she had more and if so to send them to me. She had 15 or so. I made this with them:
Mountains as Mountains
And one day, perhaps, I will see you again.
Amo-te,
Teu pai
jon
Paginas Para Clara 