ANGELS IN NEBRASKA

In an article from his webzine "Warrior of the Light", Paolo Coelho wrote:

"I let my life be guided by a strange language that I call “signs”. I know that the world is talking to me, I need to listen to it, and if I do so I shall always be guided towards what is most intense, passionate and beautiful. Of course, it is not always easy."

I have also often  found myself engaged in a "Great Conversation" that seems to be going on all around me, and occasionally I’m stunned to realize I wasn’t listening.  Lately, grounded with so many duties and laundry lists, I feel like a virtual deaf mute.  

The conversation seems to become most lively when I'm in movement. Between destinations lies a mythic land of flight and migration, a free range  in the "Bardo" of transit, where I occasionally meet Angels of the Flux pointing the way.  I'm getting ready to hit the road to go to California briefly, and already feel the longing to just be in motion........ and perhaps, those Angels, will speak to me again. 

JOURNAL ENTRY, September 3, 2005.

Stopped in Cozad, Nebraska, home of the Robert Henri Museum.

When I was getting my MFA, I had to study, among others, the work of Robert Henri and the "Ash Can School" of painting, which he founded.  It was called the "Ash Can School" because Henri and collegues were tired of the romanticized,  dreamy landscapes  of their time, and instead took to painting realistic scenes of urban life in New York and elsewhere, which was a great innovation. 

The  Cozad Museum has some beautiful paintings of the tall grass prairies of Nebraska by a local artist, and a few reproductions of Henri's "Ash Can School" paintings. They don't have any of the originals. Henri's father, it seems, actually was the founder of  Cozad, but it appears that he  had to leave rather suddenly with his sons and wife when he "accidentally" shot a man in a heated argument.  He took his family  to New York, changed his name, started the first casino in Atlantic City, and his talented son went on to study art and become famous. The boy never returned to Nebraska, although he did go on to live and work in Ireland, New York, and Paris. Cozad is proud of him anyway.

I continue to fret about my commitment to art. My life seems like a tapestry, on my good days, the threads finally woven with some skill into a colorful tapestry, I see that I have achieved some small bit of mastery. And then there are days when so much precious life seems wasted, lost, too many disappointments and wrong decisions and wrong turns. Those are days that are about emptying out, discovering things that once seemed so opaque are now, well, transparent. Unimportant. What really matters?  What am I supposed to do now?

So here I sit, with a very nice cup of coffee and a sandwich at the Busy Bee Diner, where I have a front row center seat for the First Bank and Trust Company of Cozad.

That got my attention.