Redtree Times

all present and accounted for— now at West End Gallery

Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

–Novalis, Blüthenstaub (1798)

This new painting, all present and accounted for, is now at the West End Gallery. Though it is small in size, it seems to hit like a heavyweight. It sets off all kinds of thoughts within me and raises many questions. Even its title begs for answers.

I guess that’s a good thing. Even on a morning when I feel a little foggy and am seeking a simplicity without so many questions or concerns.

The title was in my head before the composition was fully formed. It seemed to tell me that though it seemed as though it was concerned with someone or something that was lost and gone, as is the case many of the Red Chair pieces, this particular painting was more about the fact that no part of us was ever truly lost or gone, that the past, present, and future dwells within us. That those we have lost in this world still exist within us and in the atmosphere around us.

We are, after all, all stardust, made from the same material that created the universe. It’s much like the Singularity theory from  Stephen Hawking that theorizes that the universe in its entirety was once a single thing before the creation of all that we know the universe to be now. All that now is was once a single tiny point of zero radius and infinite density that burst forth with the Big Bang, carrying us through all time and space.

We were once all part of that one single point immense mass and energy. We were that one thing.

It makes me wonder if the memory of people, time, and places exist in us as actual minuscule bits of space dust we exchanged at some point. We cannot have these things, these people or times, in whole at this point but that bit we shared is still carried within us forever. And going forward, we share that same space dust and our own with others.

So that title, all presented and accounted for, implies that while it might seem that someone or some time is forever lost, they remain forever with us, in that tiny bit of space dust we once shared.

Maybe that tiny bit of space dust is what we call spirit? I don’t know.

Hey, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be when I sat down to write. As noted above, I was and remain a little foggy. Of course, I might read this later and put my hands over my face as I utter, “Oh, god, what kind of crap is this?”

Another question I can’t answer.

But, to quote Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

Let’s wrap up this thing with a song from Eilen Jewell, whose work I have shared a few times this past year. This song might apply to those folks we sometimes meet where we recognize that bit of star dust we share even though we may have never met them in this life.

That’s probably a tenuous connection at best to what I wrote. Again, so it goes.

This is I Remember You.