Has it been weeks now or months since you disappeared? We noticed. Not uncommon for you to stay away overnight, a time or two, exploring the neighbourhood you were a part of.
Our lives, years ago, blessed with a tiny stray. Here you made a home. You became part of a family, growing into an adorable beast in your own way. We grew, learned, and lived with your personality
Your playful ways entertained and, occasionally, angered. We allowed you to cuddle on the couch or sit in our windows to gaze at life beyond. You chose your place. In our comfortable lives.
You were only a housecat when you wanted to be; around when food and water was needed, or the comfort of our bed. Through the seasons, it was always warmer in your presence. We were happier then.
You had your place; you occupied many spaces in our hearts, our yard, and beyond all of that. Summer days spent basking in the sun on the deck, outside the window, where we knew you were safe.
Adventures far and wide, occasionally you would return with a mouse in your mouth, a gift for us, or with deep scratches and cuts from a scuffle with another cat as you defended your territory.
Your winter wanderings were, mainly, unknown to us. We saw only footprints in the snow; the ones that never returned. Outside of this home your world was vast, and ours is much smaller without you.
Place to place across city or continent, further perhaps. Destinations. Obligations. We travel as required, often to stay where we are. A journey. Where we end up is not always planned. No place feels exactly like home. We cannot always remember, yet we are reminded of the signs. Cities, countries, locations in between, loved ones left behind, or waiting. Come home. Regardless of where you go, no matter the baggage, I wish you all the best. I wish you safe passage.
Misplaced memories, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, like a pendulum. Moments measured but wasted anyway. Who knows how much, how far, how fast or not swift enough to be noticed or remembered. The collective fate of humanity. Over and over. We wake up and do it all again and again. Again. So, what will we notice for ourselves today, if not the shifting, if not the sway of our time?
I will work in the present, honing skills into craft, accepting where I am while envisioning where I would like to surface. Progress, of course, a destination; it is the action of, or sense of, doing that which will allow me to create a modicum of personal satisfaction.
I am guided by both curiosity and resiliency. Art, my art, may currently be only a reference point on this creative path. Don’t we all have varied mediums and methods that have ushered us through our artistic lives? Even amateurish attempts of our youth — crayon renderings or finger paintings, irregularly shaped pottery vessels, pastel smudges — have contributed to our most immediate desire to create.
As artists, the style never mattered as much as the will to fashion something with our hands from our imagination. Today, this modus operandi holds true no matter how sophisticated our attempt. The results now, perhaps polished or near perfect, remain maddening in an unfulfilled promise. Should it not be better? Don’t we want to do more? Could our efforts not be deeper, more meaningful?
The inevitable and everbearing drive for excellence.
It is so.
The words of my first photography teacher still hang in my head: ‘You are only as good as your last shot’. Humiliating as it is; humbling, yet ever inspiring.
Inspiration: it is what keeps us going, learning, and trying. Striving. For should our art become patently perfect, we know we may well lose that continued urge to create.
