Snow-Storm (A Ramble)

White powder dust slowly sifts to the ground covering the dirty concrete with a thick crust of lemon gelato ice cream. Cool and tart to the taste, refreshing on a hot summer day.
On a Toronto January afternoon, the image only makes me shiver and screw up my face with its sourness.
From my choice window seat in Starbucks, holding a blank notebook on my lap, I see a parade of once-human bundles of clothing slowly weaving their way through mounds of snow, freshly laid out on sidewalks and street. A few brave cars inch their way from west to east along Queen Street. A dog leaps in and out of the snow banks created by industrious shovels, and when he returns, a trickle of yellow forms grooves in the clean gelato.
Aretha Franklin’s rich, mellow voice croons from the speakers, as I sip my frothy latte and wonder why it is such hard work to think about plots and dialogue. Inertia grabs at my brain whenever I attempt to proceed from casual, detached observer to writer-creator. The only snippet of human life to emerge is just what is in front of my eyes; my mind remains a perfect blank. I wonder if perhaps, the fault lies in my own life, which is more observation than truly living.
The sky turns to a silvery gray and soon will again change colour to indigo, then, finally black. Cursed with being a painter, my world instead of being a moving film, consists of a sequence of still visuals.
I avoid drama and dialogue as I bump up against other life forms in my daily encounters. The sight of landscape and animals arouses my passion more then people.
I remember as a young, teenager, being passionately interested by people, observing them intently to guess their personalities, professions, and raison d’etre.
When did this change? Now, I simply don’t want to know, lower my eyes and hide. My favourite hiding place is my studio, a truly sacred space, where I feel at home communing with forces in charge of colour, canvas and secrets yet unborn.
Am I lonely? No! Oddly, practically, never…
The stories buried in my gut, dying to emerge, won’t dance across a blank page guided by my pen. They can only be told with pictures. Poised with a brush and canvas, they hurry to unfold. Fickle, the paintings tell a different story to each viewer who happens upon it. One person exclaims..”That picture is so "sad”, whereas another is delighted by its farcical expression.
Unlike written stories, paintings speak a personal message to each viewer. The story is brought to light from the deepest recesses of my bowels.
As I write these words, I wonder if they are really true or if I am merely grandstanding? Maybe there is no more meaning in artistic visuals than anything else in this earthly existence.
I remember an article my son read to me about pork, that claims it is crawling with worms. “Test this by pouring Coca Cola over a pork chop and watch the worms come out’, it says. Beef causes madness and fish, lead poisoning. Chickens cause salmonella. So much for mother’s cure-all chicken soup.
Do we know too much for our own good, or should we become vegetarians? But wait, the grains are genetically modified.
I think I will stick with painting and its deadly fumes, safer than knowing too much.
Thank goodness life leads to death, otherwise we would be in a pickle.
The sky is almost black outside the window. In Starbucks, Aretha has been taken over by the Gypsy Kings’ Latin beats. Some-one’s cell phone blasts “God Save the Queen”.
“Hey, George, what’s up? Ya, Ya, ya…oh, nothing…I fell down the stairs, my feet were wet..that was the night of the party…O.K…Ya…I’m O.K…”
Words impinge on my visuals as my latte slowly vanishes. It is time to head home. My adult kids await dinner. Maybe I’ll try turkey, nothing definitive has been declared about it yet.
As I step outside of the steamy café, a cool refreshing wind bites my face. The brisk, icy air and pristine snow scene transform me from an observer to a participant. I feel strangely at home and filled by this “Reality Play” about “winter”.

photo by me