Artist's Work

                Now for a second, let’s shut down everything around us except for this page. Shut down your Facebook, Twitter, music player (unless you want to listen to some soothing music, I suggest rainfall), cell phone. You name it and it is right by you, shut it off. Done? Excellent well let us begin at the beginning of the story.

                It is not every day that we sit down by the meadows of the wild forests where the trees meet the sky and where the clouds tough the tops. And it seems like there is not ending to the view. The fresh smell of pine and the first drops of morning dew on the grass. Let us not forget the chirping of the small birds waiting for their mothers to feed them from the fresh food with they have captured for their young ones. The bees which are buzzing around, searching for flowers to pollinate so when you get home you can enjoy the delicious taste of freshly made honey by the elderly folk which live down the street from your home. And now, let’s take you, and lets imagine for a second that you are sitting down on mossy ground right next to the pine trees in the forest just as the sun is about to come for the very first day of summer. It is rather chilly and you are wearing a jacket however as the sun comes higher and higher, it gets warmer and warmer and you realize that the jacket is pointless considering, it is the first day of summer. And despite what you have going on at home, despite what your brothers and sisters and friends or family have to say about you. You are in your sanctuary. Sitting alone and contemplating about anything you really want. However, on this particular day you decide to think about how small you are. As a person you imagine the world and how much of it you have seen. How many different people you have encountered, and what life means to you considering you are like a small particle of the universe. Meaningless, yet for some reason you are important on this day.

                It surly is not your birthday because that was a while go as you recall. What you do know however is that there is love involved somehow. You have come to love something about your life; and want to improve yourself. You have come to the realization that this feeling is like gold, it is a true feeling of happiness. Something that every day you never feel, yet here, sitting by this tree surrounded by purity and nature you are happy, truly happy. Yet for some reason you cannot determine this reason. And let’s take this a step further and put you in an even better state of mind. You realize that summer does not last forever however you reflect upon your memories. When you were just starting Elementary School and now you have finally come to the conclusion of your Senior year in High School and are ready to move on. Life is about to bring change to you. You are scared, however at the same moment you realize how happy this makes you. Especially after being stuck in an apartment with your parents where the only thing you ever saw were the four walls. Does this not make you happy? The fact that change is about to come? Of course it is. I mean sure it is scary at first but to learn means to experience. To pursue that which you seek means to go through trial and error and come to a greater conclusion about concepts and actions which to you at one point in time seemed ridiculous. Unimaginable might have been the word you use. Yet, here you are, sitting under a maple tree in the middle of the forest in your own oasis thinking about all this. And you wonder. What made me change like this? What is it about me that people like and what people hate? And why do I happen to be the person that I am the way I am? All these questions are unanswerable to you, yet you seem to be curious and curiosity raises awareness. Then just as suddenly as those thoughts came, you forget why you even contemplate such a ridiculous idea.  Friends, family and co-workers all like you for different reasons. You start to feel a warmth in your hear about these feelings.

                Despite the cold air, you are warm you are invigorated to move on in life. Yet, one more thing comes to your mind. Why are you sitting under this tree alone… Well scientifically we could go into quantum mechanics and how matter can exist only at one point in a space at a time and no two objects can ever occupy the same space… However, you are away from that world right now for a reason, math science and learning is the reason you are here. To forget the theories and theorems which fantastic teachers have provided you with. You are in this place and time to turn off your cell phone, turn off that Jon Bon Jovi which has been stuck in your head for the past five months. And you are here to enjoy something which most of us have forgotten. Or rather, the more correct statement is, chose to ignore. You are here to enjoy tranquility which nature provides you with. A place where the judgment is not someone’s condescending remarks. But rather your own decisions on what you do and what you make of yourself of this day and time.

                You turn off your phone, you ignore all calls from breakfast to lunch to supper to dinner and then you realize that the sun is almost about to set. Makes you think, why did I just spend my time sitting here contemplating all of this when I could have been enjoying a nice, warm meal at home. But the longest day of the year, you wanted to make sure you did something more than just worked, you wanted to make sure you accomplished something in your life.  Something that perhaps does not measure success, instead a personal harmony, which you have sought for the past 18 years of your life. It is on this day you decide to change things about you. It is here and now that you decide that perhaps it is time you take some control. And as you are walking to the woods for one last look at the shore before you depart these woods you look out at the setting sun.

                When you first came out here as a kid you start to reminisce on everything: the world, the people, and the love which captured you. The very first moments that you will always remember and the very same way you came here for the first time you wanted sure to say goodbye to all those memories. You wanted to make sure to thank everything around you the proper way. The memories and the kindness which it has given you, you wanted to make sure it got them back the same way it gave them to you. As you sit down on the stone wall in front of the little cottage to look at this one last sunset. You look at the blue to yellow to red to orange to purple to indigo to black sky. Meanwhile, the seagulls fly away into the distance, the birds try to find trees to perch on. The sun radiates its last beams of the longest day of the year. Your feet dug into the warm sand. The ocean waves crashing as a slight breeze blows the wakes into the shore as you smell the fresh breeze coming from both the pine in the forest and the salt from the ocean. And you ponder. When will you ever see this place again? Perhaps never or perhaps just like you were brought here when you were little you will return with your own little kids. To make them experience that which brought happiness to you to remind them that not everything which we see is just computers. That nature, love and happiness still exist. And perhaps the next time you are here it will not be just you. Perhaps it will be you and your wife or girlfriend or fiance without the child. Perhaps this is where you will chose to relive your memories…

                Anyway, I hate to cut a beautifully woven story short but it brings me to the final point of this. Despite what you go through despite all the inconsistencies and the bullies and people that we deal with. There is always time to reflect upon happiness. There is always time to find love. If love was so easy it would not have any effect on us, however finding love finding happiness is what makes us human. It is what makes us realize how lucky we are to have each other in times. It makes us realize what makes us, us. Life is beautiful and it does not matter if right now you have some darker tones because an artist’s pallet does not just consist of black and white. What it does consist of are several colors and sometimes you have to play with them to paint your own beautiful picture.

                We are all artists of life, we are all artists of love. And we are all here to make a mural that will create who we are, despite the darker tones sometimes which we mix. Because to make mistakes is to learn. To live and experience is to learn. And to fall down and come back up is to live, a life. Something that is more than just beautiful. It is what you paint it to be despite any tribulations which you may come through. You paint your own image and the people around you are just influences and we all learn from each other to paint our own self-portraits, our murals. Which someday others will be lucky enough to see and to learn just like you did.