Stay the Night

I'd like this blog to lean comfortably toward the professional rather than anything too personal but I'm an artist, not an accountant; where in the sand is that line drawn?

A crowd of beautiful and hurtful passengers have cramped shoulder-to-shoulder to ride the tracks of my last few months, and it has been brightest and darkest in rapid succession. Through it - and perhaps despite its darker elements - I spent herculean efforts concentrating on the beauty. But the universe is made up of both; call it the 18 percent gray of existence, and the exclusion of focus is only denial - it doesn't make the darkness into light.

I returned from paradise to a new place in New York with just enough heat to require socks to bed and winter hats during breakfast. The subway cackle was crisper, and the air crystallized like the ice that formed on the back of my head. The industry had its collar up against a shrinking economy, weathering the gentle onslaught of cooling and taking great effort to keep the smallest of heat or the smallest of jobs. The landscape was sparse.

At first, it was an offense. There was no beauty here - nothing but desolation. But then turning my collar up against the cold and walking into it is recognizing it - knowing the universe is composed of hard and easy, light and dark.

As are we. As am I.

The middle road is to know both - to embrace both - and to appeal to the better in yourself ... even in the cold. The bitter. The hard. In this knowledge winter feels different on my skin - as welcome as the warmth of the equatorial sun. It's tempering.

I walk through the streets thinking of my images - of the real, and the contrived. I've concentrated on the beautiful, however real beauty lies in the eyes of the scarred - eyes that have seen the darkness and come through light because they have acknowledged rather than ignored - accepted rather than shunned. To know both in the world is to know them in yourself.

The middle road is not a road of ignorance; it's a road of knowledge.