Massachusetts

This last Tuesday I found myself in the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
J. had snuck me in, and I was most grateful. After strolling through the Art Deco exhibit the exit door spilled me out into a room of Expressionism. A huge Gauguin loomed along one wall, a painting of rising, and falling. breathing, tilting. standing up, and lying down. It was titled:

D’ou venons nous
Que sommes nous
Où allons nous
:::
Where do we come from?
Who are we?
Where are we going?

It was a fair question.
I was in Massachusetts again. Where had I come from? Among other places, Durham.

Two days before election day I bought a plane ticket. just like that. I think I sensed that I would need to go to some place that was a home. A home to what I would otherwise call “home.” or Home the way my family, many friends, and the autumn ponds still call it some 13 years after I left.

Where was I going?
Rob welcomed me at the airport. “Welcome to a Blue state,” he said. And this was an oddly comforting thing to hear. You know, given circumstances.

.....
Anything I might try to say here would only be trite to the feeling of fullness I had. in sharing time with everyone in the manner I saw you all last week, and prefer: on foot. by subway. over steaming bowls and cups. in the morning. & way late at night. It was a meal of days visiting.
and now my stomach grumbles.

Among all other things, I was lucky enough to walk around the clear water of Walden Pond. It is the kind of place where your companion may be a poet, their own hair as autumnal as their words. And Thoreau would be thoroughly happy with this, I think.


The people fishing said they weren’t getting any bites. Perhaps the brown trout were following the admonition painted on the a rock in the pond...?

...Only in a "Blue state.”

…

Hey. Hi.
And Where Are We Going?
I have not the faintest of ideas. It begs the second question anyway of Who We Are. And I suppose that could be asked in more ways than there are leaves on the ground. In a world of Red and Blue states, some may wish to redraw the lines bordering Canada, as the joke is now going. But I honestly wonder who we would bother to call “we,” and where the me or the you are located among that. Politically, psychologically, spiritually, or most otherwise, there is a placeless of being that makes Gauguin in Tahiti such an agitation in a museum in Boston, mid-November.

...
In the simple sense, sometimes I wish I was where I was last week. That is to say, back in Massachusetts. feeling full that way. But maybe that is about a sense of place more than place itself. Maybe the where and the who are all confused for me at the moment.

Of course, all these questions and their possible answers are flying through us like neutrinos do: billions at every moment and otherwise completely unrecognized.

That is, unless you buy a new CD.

I bought an album by Cat Power in Cambridge. Today back in North Carolina I am listening to the very end of its 18 minute melody. and I hear Gauguin rise from Chan Marshall’s very throat, as she sings:

Where are you from?
And where are you going to?

Can songs answer paintings?

>>
Where you are going
is where you do come from,
And where I will be
is with you.

(…..)
And how do you like them apples. Massachusetts MacIntosh.
The skin is red and green, the flesh white, and it tastes as true as anything could taste to me. The youth in the painting is reaching for a fruit. Another is eating one. There is not much else to do. It’s late. it’s early. floating in paper boats. and we are all very hungry.



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Postscript:

A note on what happens over five months time between visits:

Kids—that weren’t walking before are now.


Squashes—that we planted as fingernail sized seeds in June have done well enough that even holding one up is work plenty.


Cats—On the other hand - Naki over that same time is still white and black. I take comfort in those things which stay the same.


And this would include Molly on the farm. 23 years old, and still of this world as a cat. Also still black and white. Some things don’t seem possible but are, and holy for the fact. This rickety cat is evidence and she should be beatified.


Dad has jerry-rigged a light bulb contraption of (to me) Worrying Flammability to keep her feather-weight bones and body warm as she sleeps through late years. all day and all night. St. Molly of the bathroom hamper, bless us.