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SENECA  (THE FINAL ASCENT) 

Original_ 2023_ Oil on Canvas_ 30 x 40 in

Custom 24k Gold Frame

(Not For Sale at This Time) 

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(August 2023)

“You need to stay away from those people. . … You know I'm right. . …” 

Then she let me cry. 

”What was the one thing -the only thing- you asked him for repeatedly?”

”Truth.  To always be honest with me.”

”And was he?”

”No.” 

We sat quietly for a moment.

“ Stay away from those people.”

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2023   Together. Alone. What had the chickens been up to. . … they weren't up to much!  But the rooster was crowing, ‘it's time for breakfast'

The Ojai mountain air was cooler than expected.  We gathered the eggs, and I put a small steel-rimmed pot of coffee on the stove.  No microwave. Duly noted.  To be respectful,  I tiptoed quietly around. Or maybe I was quiet for another reason. . …

I just could not get out of my head.   I was only starting to realize how deeply I had been affected. I was an entirely different person. I looked the same - on the outside, but i was lost within a storm churning inside of me for months.  My words and head and heart . . . all disconnected and I wondered  if this would be the same . . … a wall had gone up  . . … Who was this stranger inside of my head? I didn't know her at all ~ 

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I suppose it didn't matter.  He was lost deep in his own grief, so I let him be.  Writing would be cathartic as painting was for me.  Give Space. . . …  Heeding the words of Seneca, he was already hard at work.  I wondered if I wasn't there at all would it even make a difference.  Or would he lie and make believe it did - like W had lied,  repeatedly.  

Or maybe not…. . . But at that moment, I just wanted to disappear,  and just like that i was cellophane, invisible - and wanting to remain so.  And then there was the doctor's report.  A forever reminder, lest I try to forget.  Just like Willa ~ 

But the man sitting with his back to me working away knew none of this.   He only knew that I had stood for hours on a cold wet December morning by the Brooklyn Library waiting, . . … waiting, . . … with no word at all.   i had already spent hours guiding revisions uncredited and directing his work towards completion . . ..  I was there to support his dreams,  but he left me standing in the cold rain 

I was there when he moved Francine into a home,  en route to doctor visits and reviving a project without wings. I was there on the slopes at Christmastime and at the restaurant on New Year's  Eve.  .  . But on that day in December I waited. Not a word.

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Months later in Ojai I felt “safe.”   M.B. didn't know what I was like before all that, and now thanks to W's carefully calculated admonition about MB, he never would.  

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Above all,  M.B. was disciplined.  He sat head bowed at a small wooden writing desk facing the wall next to the double doors which led into the entryway. I wondered which chapter he was working on.  He was a good man,  an extraordinary man.  But I was not fully present.  It wasn't his fault. I was “Floating.  On the breath of the Wind.”  And then I sat down at my easel with a small brush, debated heavy-handed browns at the bottom, something I had toyed with for this piece, but lacking courage and the confidence I had had up until six months prior,  I eventually defaulted to a gentler more timid shade of blue.  Me without any self confidence at all.  A hollowed out shell of the woman I had worked and at times struggled to become.  Gone.  I couldn't have started a new painting if I had tried. But there was still some detail work needed on SENECA and SAGAWA too.  It was about all I could handle.  I didn't  decide against anything more bold - I just no longer had it in me.  (It would have been a far better painting).  

Slowly, meticulously, my hand shaking,  I added those minute finishing details at the very bottom.  Tears softly quietly down my cheek - not because of MB, back towards me, working out his own deep pain of losing her.   I didn't know it at that time, but some part of me had died,  and I would not paint again . . ….

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I told M.B. that he was brilliant but nobody knew that except for me. He objected.  Everyone in his field knew his writing,  he insisted.  Hmm, a small eclectic group of just how many would that be? Harsh perhaps. “Okay. Maybe some. But not the masses.  The masses need to know you. Otherwise all of this brilliant work may be lost to generations that follow.”  I said it with emphasis - especially the part about all of his work - his great love- his very essence - being LOST to the winds of time - 

“And how do you suggest . . . ?”

”Submit!”

”it's a lot of work. . … ”

”yes. Initially.  I've done it many times. It's distasteful.  But you do it - and then you do it again. It becomes easier. And you keep doing it until you hit that sweet spot. And then they call you. And then . . … then you get to do what you love.”

He is the greatest ever at what he does,  M.B.

. . … and so he took my suggestion - begrudgingly- 

and I waited to hear… but I didn't have to wait very long.  And that felt good. //

(August 2023)