Malbec tastes like Ellsworth.
A sip in and suddenly I’m slipped into a circle of lawn chairs around the makeshift centerpiece of guitar road cases and some citronella blaze. The solemnity of that sound – the cooperation of the wind some & fading leaves which catch and carry the overture, descending periodically in to brush & tap our shoulders, eventually settling to neighbor our black boots.
We both cinch the collars of our peacoats to our neck, fasten the scarves in a way that they rub at the hair on our jaw and secure in some warmth to our necks. As you light your Camel and flick the ash to your left, I raise the Malbec sip and it is as rich and spicy and this is a compression of how I viewed my own life again, finally.
I have not felt as I do now in years. It’s odd to think how quickly years pass and yellow. Perhaps since I moved from New York and my child was before me in greater measure than before, and I explored possibility more than previously – maybe the realization of capability? But no end was in sight for my time here. It was a sweet and innocent episode (but no less genuine) – a time portioned for growth but mostly I see for experience of others, for understanding of self, and for the enjoyment and distribution of God’s great gifts to us as his creation. I think I was the most joyful (I often avoid that word for its subcultural connotations) I have ever been, and perhaps that I have been since.
October is a quite important month. Not that I have rationed it so, but experience in recent years past seems to remark that this is the time when Things are revealed. Cycles are rebuilt and recalled, rhythms of death are replaced with rhythms of life and of renewal, and deep, sometimes caustic searching of self – of motive personally and socially led into a greater self-awareness than that which preceded (and giving light to what proceeds).
Ellsworth will remain, I assume, forever, as the place I began to learn to live. To feel no need for control or paramater or answer. Accepting the grey, working hard, and loving deeply. It is within this context that I began to understand the importance of mutuality, its balance with introspection, and the necessity for slowing, silence, and trust. And my relationships were strong, and my desire for them as strong, creativity rich and my experience of and search for Truth more hopeful than before.
Things since that time I have not consistently been able to incorporate into the rhythms of my life, especially since leaving my office job and entertaining the particarlities of freelance and the way living alone is (and must be) fleshed out with comm-unity in world-view. And I have tried, but then there are scars. Little pieces of pink skin that are indicators of believing one thing and seeing it not embodied as it ought to be, but I refuse to allow only personal experiences be the hinge between Reality and my own perception of it, though I also can’t deny or avoid the effects of it periodically.
I want to look back at this October and know that it is as monumental as the past three consecutively, and from what I am currently experiencing, realizing, and adjusting to in my own person, I have few doubts that this will be among the most important yet. I welcome the realization, and look forward to how it receives flesh in my daily behavior and the eventual behavior to which it leads.
If this is an Ellsworthian season, I do not think of it as anything but positive. Extremely so. My things are gone, the excess is stripped, and I’m left with nothing but camera gear, a few plaid shirts, one pair of jeans and the book collection I only temporarily attempted to rebuild after I left my entire library on the front steps of East 97th Street. I feel more free in my person than ever (the connectivity of things and experiences is real, but this is not even half of what I mean), without expectation, and willing to trust more honestly even than I did in the year before Ellsworth when I thought I had nothing to lose.
And at a time when I finally feel like there are incredibly important aspects and parts that make up the whole of my life to this point, I do have have a great deal to lose relationally I believe (and what is left is the supporting data to that headline), and that I shouldn’t do so especially for my own self-seeking, comfort, security, and service, or because I understand and perceive myself to be much more important than I am. That would be foolish, and of course if there is any direction my life is taking I would want it to not to be that. And so I’m not.
