Under the shade of an ash cloud rising from wild fires in the valley near by, I am on my porch making art. It is a hot day in September 2020. The smoke towers ominously and I think about other fires in other places. There’s a breeze in the air, but the quality is questionable, and filling into grey. Watching the cloud hovering, I am reminded of the idea of alchemy. I had already imagined that I was trying, to turn darkness into light - and I am painting something bright.
But it seems fitting to me: that ash cloud looming is an addition to the current experience of the black clouds in our lives. Under the eye of a pandemic unending, affixed in caution and unrest, heightened unemployment rates and threats of eviction, market instabilities, surrounded by injustice evident, encouraged to divide, upended into protest and riot:, we seem to be in a necessary war of the Spirit. Our personal and collective soul and identity has been called to into question in this cloud, and the only way through it, is through it.
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