Summer's End

Journal Entry August 28, 2018

    Coming to the rag end of summer, a heat wave on the cusp of autumn, the serious time of year.  I have been in a mode of waiting to heal, to fix my body, one part at a time. At some point life has to go on.

    I went to the Art Museum today to escape the heat and find inspiration. Yes, art does transcend, yet I see a painting by Edwin Dickinson from 1938, a dark impressionistic landscape that the signage says reflects the unease as war approaches. The artist is more timeless than the journalist or the politician, for sure, but they do feel the currents around them,and they often prophesy.
   I am most drawn to the lonely landscapes: Homer's "Winter Shore"--rough, bleak, threatening, sliding on snowy rocks to the sea below; Hopper's picture of blowing trees beside an empty road, only the invisible observer present; a strangely claustrophobic Andrew Wyeth: a foreshortened hallway to a room at the end with a few tools in it, all browns and greys, geometric.

  On the way home I heard Bernstein's "Age of Anxiety" symphony, with Lukas Foss on the piano, Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Music cannot stand back like a painting can. It is the soundtrack of our lives. This work is raw emotion, finally; seems intellectual at first, with its long variations, almost Hindemith-like in construction and spareness. Then he breaks out with a scream of anguish. But it isn't the end--off he goes into a dance down Broadway, a fin-de-siecle night on the town, and the next morning a wary acceptance, a weary acceptance.

   So what is it for me? Sometimes--often--I think that I don't have that many years left, and I should do something important to help this damaged world. What have I ever given, really?
   And yet, how would I use my particular talents? This human mess will go on with or without me, and isn't going to be changed by me. I am bound to be more frustrated and miserable the more I think about all the horrors. I can vote, I can give some money here or there. People who thrive on anger, or energetic young people, or the truly strong and noble can try to change things.
 
it is ungrateful to not love the day, the nature around me, the murmuration of leaves on the trees outside my window, the moonlit clouds, and the sun still greeting the morning. I can't spend my last years poisoned by a bunch of horrible old men.