Up & Down

Looking upstream

The view downstream

These two drawings were made a few days apart from about the same location on the stone retaining wall. I probably used the same pencil even. I think they are both post-Hurricane Irene; there's a lot of water being carried by the river.

Is my life this way? There are times when it's carrying a lot of emotion and tumult, the entertaining of other people's demands.  And then there are other moments (only moments!) where I seem suddenly afloat in a shallow river, caught with my centerboard half-up or down. It seems so.

When the water level goes down will the ducks return for more lazy afternoons of dabbling? But already I see flocks of ducks in unpredictable and larger increments passing overhead. They are busy too vibrating with the imperative call to… what? Move. Move!

All this, as if, time didn't exist (which makes me remember a New Yorker article I just read about the philosopher Derek Parfit). It's all about the big issues of Life… and they didn't seem so big after all.