From the Beginning

Wandering through the museum, appraising the creations scattered along the walls, I found myself before the Rothko and everything stopped.  Anchored in place, rooted in the moment.  That breathtaking moment.

Taking a different path that morning, I walked into the woods in the crisp morning air.  I stopped, stood dead still, hearing only my breath and the faint rustle of the wind.  I saw the trees arching into the infinite blue sky.  I took a breath and everything fell away.

I remember seeing her standing in my office doorway, so many years ago.   The way she stood, her dark hair and luminous brown eyes.  Her arresting and vulnerable beauty.  I knew we would be together, I knew.

In the intervening years, I have often returned to the Rothko, walked those woods countless times, and lived my life with the woman who stood that day in my doorway.   All familiar to me now.

But when I return to that painting, when I step into those woods, it is like the first time.  Filled with wonder, overcome with gratitude- undiminished.

We often think that these feelings- the feelings of the new- in time must leave us.  We imagine we must settle for the faint shadow of those intense first moments.  But those feelings don’t leave us- we walk away from them.

If we are open and ready, if we stop striving to recover something we think we lost, if we simply exist in our moment- before the art, amidst the woods, in the arms of our lover- the familiar is anew.

And so when she leaves me, I still watch her walk away, all these years later, hoping that she might turn around so that I could see her face once more- knowing I will feel again and again what I have always felt- from the beginning.