Redtree Times

Monde Parfait— At West End Gallery

The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.

–Willa Cather, One of Ours (1922)

I have to admit that I never read One of Ours, the 1922 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from Willa Cather. But I think the passage above is wonderful. And for someone who finds themself spent and exhausted at the end of every day, it feels as though it speaks directly to me.

I am currently in the midst of getting work (and myself) ready for next Saturday’s Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria and my 25th annual solo show in October at the West End Gallery. In past years this would still be a busy and stressful time for me but this year, with the effects of my treatment taking their toll on me, it seems even more pressing. My personal energy budget is running low for much of each day, made worse by the pressing nature of the situation. Stress and anxiety seem to send my fatigue into hyperdrive so its not a good time for someone who is often wracked with anxiety on an almost daily basis.

As a result, little things in my preparation that absolutely must be done keep getting pushed off, sitting undone until the panic forces me to face them at the last possible moment. I have no doubt they will get done. There is no other option short of cancelling everything and that is not a real possibility for me.

So, for the moment, these accumulated, necessary tasks hang over me like the sun upon the sky, as Cather wrote, taking its due from all animal energy.

I guess I am the animal in this equation. It sure feels like it sometimes.

Don’t know why I am sharing this on this rainy Sunday morning. Sorry that there’s not more info or interesting stuff today. This is one of those more diary-like post, I guess, written just so I’ll have an inkling of how things were at some distant point in the future when this moment is long forgotten.

The way my memory is right now, that point in the future might not be so distant. I might need reminding tomorrow morning.

Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. I had some trouble picking a song this morning. Nothing seemed appropriate. I don’t know that this song fits but it will have to do. This is from Prof, an independent songwriter/rapper out of Minneapolis. I shared a song of his here once before. His work is often humorous (and sometimes downright hilarious), bawdy, and profane but is also as often very powerful and poignant. This song is titled Heaven. It is not humorous, bawdy, or profane. It is a simple, stark song.

Simple and stark might just be the ticket this morning.