Bleeding In Black and White

“If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

You hesitate, squint, trying to find your vision; your purpose. With each pause, you draw closer to becoming Stillness itself. Avoiding motion. Afraid to make a mistake. Hands of granite and short of a believing breath, the vision distorts and fades until what was once so obvious in sharp detail has, over time, lost its clarity. Warped, confused, a stranger. 

Imagination, how does this story end? Can you still recognize your first love—your passion? Do you embrace it still, each morning obsessed until the day, too short, closes its flickering eyes to deep sleep and dreams of future blessings. Vision of Life and Love always being one, and together easily finding the path forward.     

Now, pockets of flirtation; quick and incomplete bursts of passing kindness between you and your muse. Distance ever growing. Heartbeat ever slowing.  

Where is my mark, my work? Is this the best I can do? A weak attempt at swimming the length of my quiet lake so easily disturbed by rain drops now bending its reflection, a view that keeps me guessing, wondering which way is my own. And does my love—my art—give its all in all, or is it too faint to survive the pitch and toss of anxious waters. Vision, where have you gone?

And what story is your life telling? Act I, II, and III, that trusted paradigm that begins with distilled rays promising blue never dimmed by tears of an unforeseen and approaching tragedy. Then losing focus wet with crisis as the lovely vision slides below a bruised silhouette of uncertainty—a horizon of relief never to be reached. The finale, a stony dead end, or will you find your footing and prevail in the last chapter of the narrative. Grip it tightly. Don’t lose your place. Good things rely on fingers of fortitude to turn those deserving pages to their proper place.  

Picture it: Beginning. Middle. End.

Set-up. Conflict. Resolution.

Push away into the dark of the heart where only the stars can guide and the force of an unequaled and brilliant climax makes the tale worth telling—a vision that found you not so long ago. It hasn’t left you.

Turn, look, focus.