WHO AM I?

Life sometimes resembles a painting on a stretched canvas.  In an actual painting, if the scene doesn’t go the way the artist intended, they can paint over the scene, people, or gestures with a new layer of white gesso and cover the past, then paint a new scene over the old one. It becomes a built up layer of thick pigments in layers. You can tell the painting was altered even though the original scene is hidden and can’t be seen directly. Artists call the technique of painting over scenes: “pentimento”.

Pentimento can work in life, too.

I have mentally “painted over” experiences in my life with the thick, opaque “gesso” of time and space. I did this to obliterate certain memories of people and things which happened. Afterwards, life went on and I thought they were hidden beneath that pentimento.

I have had several such occasions. Now my life is many layers thick – and I am amazed that some of the people and incidents beneath the pentimento still influence my day-to-day life though they are not foreground.

WHY AM I HERE?

I have wanted to free myself from things of the past – people from my past – strong feelings, lovers, enemies, regrets, unfulfilled desires. Missed opportunities. Defeats.

When I was 18 – just at my first Moon Node – five people appeared in my life which changed my future: One was a friend of my father’s who took me to a whore house. One was a charismatic, radical minister. The third was a woman editor who opened doors to my future as a writer. The fourth was a decision my mother made. The fifth was my Uncle who was injured in WWII. They are all dead now.

But as I get older, the life pentimento layers wear thinner and those five people – and the affects of what happened – continue. The past has created a layer, beneath the surface, which is now affecting the present.

I have occasions when I see someone, and for a moment, I am not sure it is the person from long ago or not. A word prompts the layer of my longing or regret, long past, thins and reappears.

WHAT DO I WANT?

One cannot go back to the earlier layer. But, one can apply new strokes of forgiveness. One can recognize how the present exists because of the gifts of those five people during that first Moon Node – and be grateful for how life has become. One can marvel that the Wiser Person within us sought those darker colored incidents and indigos to come to our canvas precisely because we needed to strengthen something. The doors that opened were painful, or joyous, or puzzling and confusing – but WE took them and changed. We felt once we should paint over the past we did not wish. But now, when the past intrudes we can be grateful we have survived the brutish and aggressive persons, the more powerful the experiences. Like a giant blot of indigo, some things are a huge blemish over an otherwise bright or colorful part of your live – far too intense for painting out, ignoring or forgetting.