Sadness is all around these days, and I suspect it will be for quite some time. I don’t really mind, this sadness of late is genteel, a great comfort in that wispy state that is best described as “homesick for eternity”.
Very strongly I feel the ripple of change approaching, ready to disrupt our notions of time and space. That may be the reason I’ve been quiet here these past few weeks. What stories to tell, when we’re on the verge of a major overhaul – one that will render many of the current stories awkward, if not obsolete. It is entirely possible that people will look back in a couple of years’ time and see themselves wrestling with a deep dark cloud of fear and worry and anger and resentment – and smile. What strange attitudes did we have! What preoccupation with the outside world, when all we needed was waiting for us in the inside world, ready to be implemented.
So, what stories to tell?
I could tell you about my dreams, but this will not help you as they mostly travel along the thistle-covered path to a parallel world which we will not enter, not in a long time.
I could tell you about my portion of reality, but it is so flustered I tend to take pity on it and divide it in little pieces, too little for it to become a full-grown story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Anyway, I suspect you are fed up with reality. It shifts and squirms like a rattle snake that has just swallowed a big ol’ blob of dirt with a string sticking out the back and two currants for eyes. (Fake rats. Yeah. The world as we know it is choking to death on the fakeries our ‘respected leaders’ construed. How’s that for an analogy?)
I could tell you about the sun. About the way it rises, day in day out, to the challenge of heating this downtrodden place populated with a mixture of ignorant, ignoble and ingenious people.
It is a beautiful story, actually. And I’ve told it once, from the outside looking in, on the painting called Sunrise (now for sale in my shop).
Sunrise – click for larger image
Should I tell it again, even though it is a story oft told, a story as old as Methusalem?
Upon pondering this question, I find I am in agreement with Terry Pratchett, who once wrote: “There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”
Next time I tell the story of the sun, I’ll tell it from the inside, looking out.