Riding Rhythm– Now at the Principle Gallery, Alexandria VA
Adventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result—and have been since at least the time of Odysseus—of the fatal act of leaving one’s home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one’s home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret.
–Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road (2007)
It’s one of those August mornings when I woke up feeling a bit unmoored, as though the rootedness I’ve described here recently had slipped away somehow. It’s a feeling of being both antsy and queasy, an uncomfortable one that has my eyes darting and my eyes straining for some undefinable and unknown thing. Something that most likely is not at hand.
Hard to describe, especially if whoever might be reading this has never felt that same sort of anxiety that make you feel as though you are lost in a storm at sea with no shoreline in sight and a sky that gives no clue to where you are or where you’re heading.
Fortunately, I have made it through multitudes of such mornings. To add to the Odysseus reference from the Michael Chabon passage above, it’s a matter of lashing yourself to the mast so that you don’t do something rash and just riding it out. Eventually the sea calms and the skies indicate direction.
Soon, home and all the rootedness it offers will be in sight.
To tell you the truth, just writing this short bit this morning has calmed the seas. Home is at hand.
Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music selection, a song that is right in line with this post. It’s a great cover from Bonnie Raitt in 1972 of the classic Steve Winwood song, Can’t Find My Way Home.
Redtree Times 