Thursday, March 30, 2017

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Every day for several years now, I’ve passed this Nick Patten print that hangs in my hallway next to a large mirror. They complement and balance each other, framing worlds both present and ethereal. The mirror flips me around, offering a perspective I can only see from outside myself. It shows me the forest while I’m still among the trees. Conversely, Nick’s painting draws me in and invites me to a different place, somewhere very familiar, just out of memory’s reach.

A beam of sunlight warms a wooden chair, and my mood. Light slats blaze with floating dust protozoa, undulating, in and out of view like microscopic bumper cars, cilia driving directionless traffic.

Children’s voices, muted in dual soliloquy, bounce softly down the stairs.

Presents still wrapped in brown paper coats, vie for space on a high shelf inside the narrow closet, chair sentinel guarded, offering an invitation to sit. I pause, quiet in the moment, before my climbing footsteps make my presence known to the eager chaos that awaits me up those stairs, more valuable than each breath I take on my way home.

hmh

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