Cane No. 2

I sometimes sit at the desk by the window looking out over my back yard, working at my writing.  I see the cane I have mentioned before, moving in varying winds. It has been featured in some other writing. But as I watch the cane - the light and shadows, the texture, color, the line and the motion - I think to myself, what would Paul Hotvedt do?

Earlier, I took his painterly advice and I looked up Monet’s Woman with a Parasol on the internet. I was initially a little unnerved by the profusion of varied images, but unwilling to travel to the National Gallery, I picked a digital image and looked as best I could for the brushstrokes. I think I could see what he was talking about.

But again, and in some reaction to the digital world, I am drawn to real things. There is some irony here, as both writing and painting primarily represent real things to varying degrees, although a painting is its own real thing, which can be observed, preferably at arm’s length and not on a computer screen. And, a book, too - cover and paper and ink - is a thing. But words are no thing.

Words are manipulated, first, perhaps, in my mind, then transferred to a page where they fix a kind of representation of a thing. And now we’ve come back to the cane.

I cannot, nor do I want to, stop thinking about the cane. Even today, as I sit here, the sun coming around to this side of the house, the cane is not quite motionless, even in the still, hot air. Stalks. Leaves. Brushstrokes. Please forgive what is not meant to be a pun, but the cane makes an impression on me.

I would take Paul Hotvedt’s further advice and try to paint it myself, but I am sure even with hundreds of attempts, I would be disappointed with how little more I would come to understand what the cane is – perhaps even what the cane represents. I am not Monet, or Hotvedt, or even a student of painting. I took a pottery class once, and made some nice little bowls. The sensation and the knowledge of having made those real things will remain, but I was never a potter. And I could only dabble at painting.

This is how life is, among the many ways we think about it, we cannot do everything, nor see everything. But I have seen some things. In my mind are images and ideas and, yes, impressions. I count myself fortunate to be able to say a word or two about the cane. But whatever I say, I will not be able, even in a metaphorical sense, to uproot my invasive, expanding patch of cane. That is, in written terms, although I can to try to capture and dissect the very essence of the real, living cane outside my window, all I am doing is hinting at the realities that are there.

I am no animist, but I am coming to see, for lack of better words as I compose this word sketch, a spiritual reality in physical things.

I look at my cane. I step outside. I hear it, touch it. Late, at the end of the coming winter, I will lop off the then dead and dried cane stalks. And later, from the living roots, alive in the unseen darkness underground, it will all begin again. And that’s not the half of it.

I have seen what I have seen - and wondered.