Land of Seven Moons— At West End Gallery
The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe.
–Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (1951)
I live a pretty isolated existence so I can’t speak for everyone, but it seems like a lot of people are feeling alienated by the jumbled strangeness that is taking place. It’s an overwhelming sense that the landscape around you as well as the people within it and their customs are foreign to you, that you somehow don’t fit in.
It’s a sense of feeling like a stranger in a strange land, to use that term that descended to us from Moses in the book of Exodus and its later use as the title for the sci-fi classic from Robert Heinlein. It’s a term I’ve employed a number of times through the years to describe the sense of alienation with which I have sometimes struggled.
I have to admit that this feeling is in air around me in recent times. However, this sense that many others may well be experiencing that same sense of estrangement from an existence that once felt naturally homelike makes me believe, like the words at the top from Camus, that there is a progressive step, a way forward from this, at least for us as a group.
Though it overwhelms our minds now, we have to understand that the reality that we observe in this moment does not have to last forever. And because there are so many of us feeling this new sense of strangeness, it will not.
That’s just my feeling this morning. There may not be anything instructive in it. But it perhaps it can provide some comfort, as strangers in this strange land, knowing that beyond the now alien emptiness around us there are others who are looking up at those same seven moons, wondering as I do how they came to be and if they will always be there.
Here’s song that sprang to mind just now. Actually, the lines from the chorus:
Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Strange days indeed
Most peculiar, mama
It’s Nobody Told Me from John Lennon, recorded near the end of his life and released several years after his murder.
Strange days indeed…
Redtree Times 
I’m curious whether the actual alignment of seven planets on February 28 (or anticipation of the event) influenced your painting. If not, it’s a neat coincidence.
I would like to say it was intended but it was not. We’ll have to settle for a neat coincidence.
I know how you feel. I used to be proud of being an American. We were the land of the free and the home of the brave and now we are the land of the dictators and oligarchs and the home of cowards. So sad.
You’re right, Lucy. There’s a terrible irony in how these “America First” movements always end up representing values that are the opposite of those that we most often use to define this country. They see freedom ina much different way than you or I. I hope we can be proud once again someday.
Well, today I chose to work on art and participated in an online workshop that will run all week…so that took me away from doom scrolling and reading Substack but each time I dipped my toe back into the madness, I felt like crying. Seriously crying. So more art work and more looking and reading about the beauty that still abides and less of the other will be better for me, I think. Spring will come and it will help. I love the painting – 7 moons are most peculiar but very beautiful.
Yes, art is definitely a refuge in times such as this. I hope you can find a way to shut out the madness and create new beauty. There is never enough of that in this world. All good things to you, Rhonda.