Over time
The experience of this flux
Of my selfhood through these decades
From earliest re-‐collections
Through the struggles of identity
Relationships
Loves
Failures
Betrayals
Deceits
Fooling others
Fooling oneself
Exposed
Denatured
Traumatized
ICU bed unable to move
Loyalties
Rituals
Studying
Writing
Teaching
Relationships
Self-‐destruction
Self –sacrifice for others
Compassion
History
Survival
Sense of other
Drowning in love
Experiencing the sunlight
The sacred lake
The needle plunging into human tissue
The precision
The diagnosis
The thrill of healing
The hurt done to others
Through incompetence
The life given to others
Through intuition
The rejection
The wounding
The inner boy alive
The divine
The feminine divine
The wounded divine
The music of the divine
The art
The Bach and Chopin preludes
The children
Their pain
The grandchildren
The utter joy and unawareness
The sense of time and its passing
The sense that nothing has changed
The pain in the heart that remains
Of loves and hurts
Where time has no bearing
No dulling
No calming
No soothing
For these points in the biography
That emerge from the canvas two-‐dimensionally
And prod me the viewer
Gazing at it, as if in an art gallery
Reminding me of unfinished business
And the real bullet points of my life
That withstand, and resist the passing of time
In these moments of anguish
They all coalesce
To form an indicting finger
In the court of self analysis
The good times seem a dream
Only these nodes of anguish
Seem real
The loves and betrayals
The moments of bliss-‐in-‐pain
These seem now
As a privilege
A glimpse into another world
Through the heart not the brain
