Solace

Why is it that no one can offer me words of comfort that stop my brain from turn and wheeling and stumbling over the biggest stress of my life? Why do I feel like I'm falling but not going down? And there are no resolutions in sight. No places for me to sit, and rest and dream of something else.

I recently finished reading W.S. Merwin's translation of Dante's 'Purgatorio'. It's a poem so full of hope and action on longing, and yet I take no solace from it. Dante might find his Beatrice after seeking her through Hell and climbing the mountain of Purgatory, but I cannot see over the next ridge of the journey and I am no where near to Dante's trial. While Dante seeks his answers among the dead, I keep living. And keep looking to live. And keep working at life. And grabbing at new pieces of it. Perhaps searching for something. Perhaps...

I know why I went to Scotland now. It took too long to figure out. I was looking for something. I didn't think I was yet old enough for a quarter life crisis, but that's the thing about life, you don't really know how long it is or how much you've really lived. I fought through a year of knowing that everything I went searching for I had actually left behind. But the thing about a wild, mad, desperate search is that even if you don't find what you want, or realize you've already lost it, you do find other things. I would not give up the things I found for anything in the world. And I think the pain was part of the finding. And I'm not just saying that because I'm an artist. The true conundrum is that you can't have the things you found and the things you left behind together. By definition that must remain apart. And no amount of wishing can bridge the distance of a year.

I found the following in a footnote to Purgatorio. It is the second most beautiful thing I've read in years. The first still being 'The Girl with Glass Feet'.

I have seen the bright star of the morning

that appears before the break of day

take the form of a human figure shining

above all others, as it seems to me.

A countenance of snow colored with scarlet,

eyes shining and full of love and joy-
I cannot believe the world has in it

a Christian girl so full of good and beauty.

And from the love of her I am overtaken

by so violent an attack of sighing

that I do not dare say a word before her.

If only she could know my desire

without my speaking she might show compassion

and so reward me for my suffering.

-Guido Guinizzello (1235-1276)

I usually don't hold with writing about my personal stress in such a direct way, and yes, this is as direct as I'm going to write about my personal stress on this blog. But sometimes I just need to spill, even when nothing directly references the stressor. This is by way of an apology to anyone not interested in this post at all.