The Best Seat in the House

Waiting for spring….?

These past few days, I’ve felt cocooned in my snow-bound home. Every sound is muffled, every angle softened.

Sitting here in my pyjamas, I know that I will soon be heading out to work in the frigid world beyond my lamplit writing desk.

It is early still. Not yet.

I make my way into the kitchen in the darkness, and start making coffee, then slip into my desk chair overlooking the backyard, and watch the world wake up. At this time of year, it’s still very dark at 5:30 a.m.. While I make my coffee, I can look at the full moon in Leo setting in the western sky outside my kitchen window. It is a crisply brillant disk in a cloudless sky, made ever brighter by the polar air.

By the time I reach this point in my page, the eastern sky is lightening. A soft light beam joins the setting moon and the rising sun.

Everything in the winter landscape is sleeping. Under the soft layers of everything, possibility awaits.  Only the stark outline of tree branches and power lines cut through the grey, pregnant sky. What seed is nesting there?

Who knows? It’s only February. Not yet.

I stand at the edge of everything, sensing the currents that swirl around me. I observe, one foot on either side of any divide, taking it all in.

It is what I do.

I am a witness. I think it is a critical aspect of my life’s work, with a pen or with a brush.

When I was younger, I always felt sidelined: by the limitations of epilepsy, my age as the youngest in every class, my divided loyalties as a bilingual child in the middle of two confronting cultural communities. I wanted to belong somewhere. I did, just not where I thought I should.

Now, as a creative, I cherish the best seat in the house. From where I stand, I can observe the world from just enough distance to see a bigger picture, and yet be close enough to engage in the rich interactions that connect me to common humanity.

It’s the best place for me.