The expulsion of fire, smoke, cinder and ash on Mt. Lemmon parallels my own outbreaks – – wonderment, awe, bewilderment, sorrow, despair, depression, tainted hope, jaundice, and gloom. I am unAmerican to the bone.
I’ve come to Oro Valley in Arizona not to retire but to live and to die. I had no idea I would end up here. Isn’t that life?: I had no idea. . . The mores here are different, of course, and this 9/11 New Yorker takes no prisoners, is often insufferable; but like everywhere else, locals are locals — neanderthalish, whether in upstate New York or in Oro Valley. I’ve come for all kinds of reasons. I’ve come for the mountains, those rugged melancholic melodies that undulate in craggy shapes across the land, a run of musical notes.
I am red-green color blind which precludes an accurate description of the flora on Mt. Lemmon and the Catalinas. But it is also a metaphysical question. I do see colors, but not what you see. Your red is not my red. Think of it as an optical opinion-making. I see tone and texture, I respond to color, but differently than you do. Because of my “disability,” society denies me two things: I can’t be licensed as an interior decorator, and I can’t serve as a jet pilot. I am devastated.
So the mountains can’t be described accurately by me; however, their impact is another story. These knuckles across the horizon have a range of colors and textures that calm me, that are majestic in a low key way, like a palomino in a field — think that for a second. They grab me, I feel a neglectful solace, for they are without intent but their sheer beauty, their inheritance, causes emotions, rifles through my sensibilities like a gentle wind across a field of grain.
The inanimate has a beauty to it, if we allow ourselves to see it. I guess that sums up art. What is a painting if not a parallel universe, rather, what is a painting if not an illusion of an illusion? It is almost three a.m. I’ll stop here, for now, as Morpheus has come for me.
Leave a Reply