Marsden Hartley: The Last of New England—The Beginning of New Mexico: (1918–19)

" … with hungry eyes we run into the day."

Depending upon how I parse my life, it's either comprised of endings or beginnings, and probably both. I'd wager that my life, and any life, features many more beginnings than endings, though, again, depending upon what I consider a beginning and an ending. I've grown to think of every morning to at least represent, if not precisely 'be', a NewBeginning, where the slate, if not exactly wiped clean, seems to lose some clutter. My life seems much simpler at three in the morning than it ever does at noon. By sunset, which in early June at this latitude comes ever nearer 9PM, with twilight stretching until well after ten, I'm never certain when the end of any day has finally come. It arrives after I've already headed for bed, where I dream of fewer complications and the promise of a mulligan.

If only each new morning actually brought a NewBeginning, a Dorian Gray Day where history's relegated to an odd attic corner and I have no reputation. My awkward past laid to permanent rest, I might set about creating a fresh history and improved legacy. Rather than maintain some bucket list of accomplishments, I'd much prefer to catalogue all the times I decided to just start over, to find a different handle, to release my past in favor of moving forward. Projects, I've long held, are born perfect and can only go downhill from there. That initiating conception inevitably becomes the crown of each's creation, supreme until complications take their fill. Then, each compromised by itself, they stumble toward redemption, which usually only comes with another NewBeginning.

Very little of what happens at the very beginning could have been planned in advance. One takes the hand one's delt at the start, then sets out to make something out of it. It's very little right then, largely as yet unrealized potential, most of which will very likely never be realizable, except in warm anticipation. In prospect, one might possess anything, if only in some foreseeable future. The satisfaction's nonetheless actual. To be indentured to some imminent satisfaction might produce the most satisfying possible experience. Supper savored in advance usually surpasses any one actually swallowed. I live more for my NewBeginnings than I ever live for closure.

I have unfinished songs that I've been trying to complete for more than thirty years. I occasionally pick them up again, then fall in love with that melody again, and then confuse myself all over again with the rhyme scheme I've chosen. Each NewBeginning injects fresh potential. It has happened, and more than once, that when I picked up some piece of unfinished business, a masterpiece somehow fell out of that long-sequestered potential. I prefer to believe that any odd morning, any NewBeginning, might similarly stumble upon some long neglected potential and breathe new life into this world.

"We were born for reasons that I can't imagine yet,
mysteriously blessed, we come to be reborn,
tasting of the essence of each sunrise,
with hungry eyes we run to meet the day."

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Reconning, #PureSchmaltz