Swan Song – An Abstract Chilmark Aria

This is Skip.

One of this world’s truly authentic selves.

A person for whom the esthetics of beauty
is the fundamental element of existence.

Someone deeply connected to nature’s expressions
who finds art and music and dance
vibrating between all living things
and whose joyful spirit
when unleashe,
can fill an island with song.

Over a year ago I asked Skip to model for me.
I had some ideas.
Skip had other ideas.

We met and shared some croissants and coffee
listened to each others’ stories
talked about art, and Findhorn, and philosophy
and listened some more.

Then we set out to seek the muses.
Skip pointed me down up-island roads that were hidden from maps
we stopped for stone walls
and wildlife
wildflowers
and whispers.

There were stories behind every corner
pebbles on the road, on Skips’ journey
and a few on mine, and new ones we were creating together.

Skip is a painter.
And one of the things we talked about was
including one of those paintings …in my painting.
We brought it along, and let the muses decide.

We ended up at the bluff… Camp Sunrise.
A melding of sacred spaces.
The morning sun had risen to clear October skies
and the meadow was just waking up to the light.

This is the part where I get emotional.

Because the morning sessions I spent working with Skip
studying and working
in that profoundly familiar space
was the last time I saw the house
perched on the edge of the planet
in all her grace and glory
before they demolished it.

We all knew it was coming.
This time when nature’s pounding would erode the bluff
wearing away at the land
until there was no where else for the houses to rest.

In my island time…
which began as the great gift of knowing Lynn Langmuir
whose generous heart was deeper than the ocean
and steadier than her beloved stone wall
that very wall which wanders through this painting…
over the thirty plus years I have been coming to this bluff
the chicken coop of a farm house
had twice been moved back from that threatening edge.

It is hard to imagine
in this painting
that there is a 40 foot drop from bluff to beach
just a mere five feet from the edge of her front porch.

And still…
this old Yankee stalwart ship-of-a-shack
she stood proud
holding her own
generations of the Langmuir family
and the many who were welcomed by them
were folded into the embrace
of this enchanted space.

But the land…ran out.
And so, while the other  more modern structures
of garage and bunkhouse were able to be moved
out back and beyond the wetlands
to the farthest section of the parcel
the bones of this old gal
had been deemed too fragile for the move.

You couldn’t tell from our distant vantage point
that while Skip and I gamboled among the stones
and communed with the muses
the house had been emptied of all its touchstones.

The old wicker woven lounging chair was gone
the daybeds stripped of their sleep-softened pillows
kitchen shelves bare of the pastel colored fiesta ware
paperback mysteries of Riggs and Craig
no longer insulating the cubby-holed shelves.

Puzzles and kite string
checkers and cribbage
amber eyed owls who lit up the hearth
journals of writings from visiting friends
with new chapters written each year
for us all to catch up.

New nicks
and old
from bumps on the bedroom lintel
with the yellow painted symbol of a duck
…reminding us to.

The tears in each sink from the iron and rust
the old brown barn coat ever-hanging
on the white wooden hooks behind the green door.

All these objects
and a hundred more …
they have been the keeper of our memories.

The sunny days
the stormy nights
we grew up in that house
on the bluff
as she grew old
and… in her weathered-shingled way
became…
the things we are made of.

This painting then
for the house
is her swan song.

Skip sings it for us all
an aria as abstract
as the tapestry of souls
who have ducked to cross her threshold
and sought refuge in her wings.

In thanks to dear Lynn…
Peace.