Dear reader,
Above a white rooftop under a cloudy sky, the moon looks down and into herself.
Under a solitary streetlight, moths rush to meet the flame. They seem to wonder, lost, yet, know precisely what they’re doing.
Perhaps we are the ones who are lost.
Engulfed in the constant stream of thinking - as a highway heavy with the passing of cars - and pressed between a thought and a feeling, oblivious, it seems, we are, of the fact that the former transforms into the latter.
The world is made up of endless noise, it effortlessly makes one overlook the existence of silence. Even more effortlessly, it makes one defy the richness of solitude.
Yet, in the quietest of instances and the darkest of places that one might allow one's self to be, there is a whisper. It is subtle and soft, as a morning caressing the remains of last night’s sleep on one’s face.
It does not scream.
It does not shout.
It utters, under the breath, truths that one might want to escape, or is too frightened to acknowledge. As a butterfly awakening the fields and the valleys, with nothing but presence, so the soul awakens to it.
I look down from a balcony on the eighth floor. Two people eat dinner in the warm light. They laugh, and the summer air laughs with them.
Further up the street, in the shadows of the sidewalk, a man walks his dog.
Two lovers pass them by, holding hands.
And, sweetness, succulent and pure, takes hold of the heart.
It’s the sort of sweetness that one experiences at the beach, sitting under a shade, shying away from the sun’s heat, and eating peaches the colour of a sunset.
One bite, and the sweetness of that bite starts to run down the sides of the mouth. It’s sticky, messy, and human.
It escapes the eye and finds the heart.
And, perhaps life is in these little moments and unequivocal actions, glimmers of light in the ceaselessness of darkness.
Perhaps love truly is in our brokenness and the acceptance of the distortions that make us human.
Not the grand, perfunctory materializations of the ego, whose purpose is the heaping of insignificant, short-lived, and overall unnecessary, external validations for some made-up perfection.
There's no one to impress.
Becoming observant, one finds that there is only to be.
As I prepare our next read, those already competed are here to remind us that, no matter the art form, or the expression, there is something fundamental and everlasting in our world.
Science papers, scribbled poems on forgotten, coffee-stained notebooks, and stories told to children to put them to sleep - all point to a mystery far greater than the limits of the intellectual mind.
A mystery that we are made of.
If you still haven't had the chance to read our latest release in THE ARTISTS SERIES, VOICE OF FREEDOM: On Patti Smith and How Being an Artist Means Being Human First, you can do so here, now.
Also available now on A RAY OF SIGH are a couple of sweet new releases:
*This month's selection of photographs. * A revisit of our past shared weekly letters, * A STRAND OF HAIR THAT YOU SEEM TO HAVE
now published and available to read FORGOTTEN ALL ABOUT
as blog posts. Morning came with a crispiness
In the air today,
It caught the birds by their songs
And took them dancing by my window.
Until the next letter, I am sending you love. Yours, Meri
PATTI SMITH to ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE “Dear Robert, Often as I lie awake I wonder if you are also lying awake. Are you in pain or feeling alone? You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist. I learned to see through you and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together. Your work, coming from a fluid source, can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke then of holding hands with God. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don’t let go. The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all. Patti”
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