Sunday Meditation #42: Sketchy

Christ, I don't reckon I know what has gotten in to me. Springtime on the headland is usually a time of joy, even for a a child of the fall such as I am. The sea looks different, feels different, even smells different. Maybe it is life blooming a bit in the shallows and the depths, stirred up by the rolling of the waves. This spring, I am different.

More restless than usual. Head full of ideas that never make it past the daydream stage. The slush of thoughts not making it to the ice of clarity. The proof is in the scratch papers, notepads and detritus piled up on my desk. They form a dune banking up to the windowsill. The paper rolls and bleeds into the dunes. It is a curious thing to have a sandbank comprised of the ideas illuminated in ink that ultimately is wasted. The scribe in me feels shame at the thought.

There is no avoiding it. Truth in front of me. The very notepad under my right hand bears little in the way of words and much in the way of idle sketches. Sketches of what, some may ask. I cannot say other than describe them as architectonic, formal follies. Mostly they depict variations on cubic volumes, shaded with crosshatches. Towers? Obelisks? Cenotaphs?

That last idea makes me chuckle. Cenotaph is fitting. Little monuments erected in honor of ideas buried elsewhere in my mind, or somewhere in the cottage around me. The sea, even! The sea. It waits there beyond my windows. Jade swells reflecting an unquiet mind. My hands stop shaking long enough for my attention to be drawn to the sky. A mottling of pewter clouds rolls in. Beneath them I can see the gauzy stain of rainfall. Spring has been wet here so far. Much has been washed away under its maulings and caresses. This I know.

The cottage fills with that special light of overcast as raindrops spatter and hiss on the glass panes. It comforts me in a way that sunlight and blue sky do not. My hand continues to sketch. I am building something. No, I am searching for something that I have lost the words for but my heart seems to know from someone I once was decades ago now. I recognize some of the drawings from my adolescent years, the younger me sketching out abstracts in blue and red and black. Somewhat confused by what they could mean, not knowing how to quit drawing.

The paper fills with fragments of someone I used to know. I can see him there. The rain falls harder, and weariness floods my gut and head. I watch the drops fall into the sea where perhaps they trouble it just a moment. But the ripples vanish as the sea rolls on. I take that as a lesson for my heart, rippled and anxious, but rolling on.