Thought for The Day - A Moment

A Kiss 9 x 12 pastels

7/31/06 2:44 pm

A whisper

Lost in the wind

A wish

Tossed with a penny in a fountain

A goodbye that lasted longer

But felt like a flash of lightning

As it fades away

The thrill of an early summer bike ride

Watermelon

Cold while the sun is so hot

Dripping and sticky

Sweet and delicious

Filling up your insides

Briefly, for a moment

Laughter

When your eyes are all cried out

Coming from a memory that pops up

But as suddenly as your grin appears

It’s gone

Chased away by the icy cold of the here and now

A pleasant dream

With a cozy ending

Followed by a gentle stirring

As you awake to a sunny day

You stretch

Smile

Full of energy from your mind’s movie

But as your feet touch the floor

The haunting of the same old grind

The car that won’t start

The….

And the….

Plus the…

Send that dream down the drain

Taking with it the joy you felt

A moment

Passes in a minute

Some are lost

‘Cause we are looking in the wrong place

Others

Get called up to remind us

Caution us

Warm our hearts

Or stop our tracks

And somehow

Someway

They are lost

Brushed away like pesky flies

When we choose to focus on

The here and now

The “never will be”

And the lost happenstance

Yet they are there

Happening now

Happening way back when

And some are held in reserve

For later

In this Moment...

In the last month or so, I’ve spent a great deal of time ‘reverting’ to my former self. The former me anticipated, look forward to, and dreaded. Life wasn’t lived or experienced in the moment; living meant looking at my empty hands. I would look back on my life and wish to go back. I looked to the future and it always felt like “tomorrow never came.” When I got ‘this’ or ‘that’ as soon as it was accomplished or achieved, ‘it’ lost its luster and excitement.

In the moment…the past cannot be recovered and the future remains out of touch. But in the moment…there is no thought regarding tomorrow. I am living the dream – NOW.

In the last month, I’ve been saying this a great deal: “what if no one buys it?” or “suppose none of my friends are interested in my work? What if they only want to ‘look’ but not ‘buy?’ Sitting here now, I have to slow down my heartbeat and anxiety and live in the moment. Enjoy the process of imagining and believing. When the future seems scary and the past is either a reminder of failures or lost glory, there is no better time than the present. What I’m feeling now, no matter how depressing is a symptom of a desire I believe will go unfulfilled. There is only now.

In the moment, at this time, there is only me, these words and my God. A moment lived in genuine wonder, thankful for gracious activity. A moment where my value isn’t defined in the opinion and ‘buying power’ of others. And deciding that this same moment defines my life. This is living; allowing my love of the exercise, then imagining someone with one of my paintings or drawings in their space. In this moment, someone is coming home and sitting in front of one of my paintings. In this moment, a child sits with a magazine in his lap, one of my paintings looks up at him and he sees the impossible.