Studio Window 5:45 AM July 27 2026
Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.
–Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1867)
I looked out the window of the studio this morning around 5:40 AM. The light was just rising. A light fog. A patch of buttercups next to the bend in the studio’s driveway that leads out to our main drive.
Nothing remarkable. I have looked at this same spot thousands of times in the nearly twenty years I have worked in this house. Actually, probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Most of those times it is done as a mere glimpse, without thought at all. Sometimes it might come as a delivery truck is pulling up the driveway or a group of deer or turkeys slowly nibbling their way through the clearing where our drives converge. Or perhaps it is simply fleck of light moving in the periphery of my eye that draws my glance.
It doesn’t really matter why. It’s just an always slightly shifting scene that I have looked out on innumerable times.
This morning as I looked out at this scene, I began to wonder if this might be one of those images that is seen so often that it literally burns itself into your deepest memory.
The kind of memory that that shows itself in the series of images that might flash through your mind as it winds down towards its finality one day.
This sort of image flashback is an often-used device in literature and cinema and it has often come to mind through the years as I stop for a moment and look up the trees at the sky. It is always in moments of quiet with maybe a slight breeze that moves coolly over my face and rustles the leaves so that they make their light chattery sound. There might be the distinctive call of a thrush in the woods.
I often wonder at these moments if this might be one of those final flashing images in my mind at the end of my life.
I hope so. Just as I hope that this scene out my studio window is included.
I hope my final reel is filled with those scenes of calm moments when I feel connected to my surroundings and to the greater power of the universe.
I am sure there will be some more traumatic or enigmatic moments. I briefly told the story of how a fall off a ladder brought me to painting. That story reminded me of an image that haunted me in my dreams for a few years after, one where I was hurtling headfirst towards a large moss-covered stone below my ladder. I would often wake with a start just before slamming into the ground.
I sometimes wonder if that scene is cued up somewhere waiting to make an appearance in my final reel.
If so, that’s okay and fitting because as traumatic as it was, it got me here. And now here in this place I have images like the one out my studio window burning themselves deeply into my mind.
I’m looking out the window again right now out of my deeply engrained habit. The scene has shifted becoming lighter revealing that the fog has moved in a bit more. It’s lovely as always.
It feels it is part of me now as I am part of it.
Burned in deeply.
Here’s a favorite song that I hope will be included in the soundtrack of that final reel. This is a live performance of Souvenirs from the late John Prine.
I would normally tell you to git at this point. But so long as you don’t block my view, you can stay a bit longer. That’d be nice.