Sol's Inner Vault

Everything changes, I say to my son. No doubt, he is sometimes annoyed to hear that, newly into his last teen year. What I mean is more the culture, the norm, what's considered by a society to be worthy, these values change. Strong in spirit, lively in personality, our son is a young man now in a world that often fries or frightens my wits, puzzles my often tenuous grasp of common sense, and too often rattles my own reality. Remembering to feel more reassured, as I somehow grew up in one cogent piece. So, is the worry justified, or even relevant?  Today's culture of random violence, mindless tiktok impulse, self-absorbtion, plus massive and constant cerebral stimulation, resembling hooked and crazed mice in some mad experiment of self-destructive design, is it at all sane?  Does it nurture our humanity, or help to advance our collective chances for being here or anywhere in the very near future? Still hopeful for my child's prospects, yet also worried about the social fabri

What seems most impossible is merely another reality in disguise. Take for example, the life and times of countless galaxies in the ever-expanding universe. Can it be true? The utterly inconceivable vastness of space, the distances between stellar bodies so great that entire galaxies may pass thru each other without even two stars out of hundreds of millions ever colliding? There is no impossible in the cosmos. Yet, how can one ever get their tiny arms around God, or a faithful belief in a single Creator of all that exists, when the universe mysteriously accelerates even faster its own inexplicable expansion? Belief and theory support as they do, but no one has a clue about where it's all going, or why. Faith is not provable. Meanwhile, the impossible becomes daily mainstream, the life and times of humans and galaxies continue onward, with no pause or plausible explanation.

If art- as some say and I agree- also becomes how we live our lives, then I'm working on one incongruent, strange, annoying, and perplexing project.  It can only be a masterpiece of chaos, a hot mess of possibilities, outcomes, choices gone awry, or a whirling abstract, or collage of unknown collaboration, lost connections, forgotten faces.  The artist controls far more than the haphazard strokes of life's images and events, often emerging with only mystery for design. The analogy weakens within the unyielding reality of chance or random circumstance.  True, attitude is everything. True, art remains how I may live my days, complete this project, realizing a final destination, or, maybe more. Art then is how I see. The artist strives to see things as they are, without embellishment, or commentary, or biased eye.

Ran into an old customer this morning, we chatted for awhile. She brought up "the old days",  and how life in the neighborhood didn't include today's horrific violence.  And, how we may have had the last best childhood. I generally agreed, but silently also wondered if every past generation felt as we feel, that theirs was the last best. My own childhood growing up in south Los Angeles, 50's and 60's, both blessed and stressed in ways that are probably more typical than strange, all families challenged, most have the mixed-bag whether known or realized.  Being loved meant we never felt poor, or without hope, or too afraid of the future. There was a trust, unnamed perhaps, but strong.  Some of my best early memories include markets. Grand Central Market, downtown on Broadway, now also a local historical landmark. Our neighborhood market, I think it was a Von's on the corner of Florence and Van Ness. I remember a meat market with my father, many visits, east

As the sun neither sets nor rises.  As the moon faces us seen or not.  As ocean waves roll as they're told,  and the world's winds whirl over shifting continents along corridors of storm, cloud, or desert calm. So may the breath of God be felt in a child's laughter, or an old soul's final moment , or a loved one's lost scent, or within joys of friendship. As stars devour the distance of space, and galaxies assume all shapes of gravity and growth, so do stellar bodies disappear away to somewhere else unknown, just vanishing in silence. There's much more to know which is a hopeful way of saying we're forever roaming, alone with our vaulted imaginations, still restless, still seeking.

Have some friends who are great artists, so talented, imaginative, free to see the world so differently. But, art is an aptitude that is within everyone in some unique format. Art can be an attitude, an internal lens that focuses all that we do. Art may be an invisible canvas for enduring hardship, emotional trauma, also physical pain-- art may be a healer. There is no special requirement. Art may be your simple movement thru a chilly, early morning home, waking up  with every careful step. Seeing the smallest details in all that surrounds us becomes an art of perception, both gazer and object changing the other in a moment's dance of recognition and wonder. Art may be a way to breathe in the quiet of your soul, in the moonless midnight of your challenge, alone and still, you find within the will to continue. Art may simply be a hopeful day to follow.