Origin

Ultimately, we come to be known as Earth and Moon, among many moons and planets and stars. I am by far quite a bit younger than Moon, stoic and cold, seeming uncaring. She, who rarely directly communicates with me, but oh - when she does - firstly the oceans respond by churning and heaving, then waves reaching to the skies and beyond.

Moon begat me, and my breaking away from her ripped my heart to pieces. At first, I shot far out into space and eventually slowed to a soft silence of forever pain. And loneliness. I constantly travel through what humans eventually call the "Super Universe" through dust and gasses, brilliant colors beyond imagination, the soulful sound deep, rhythmic, soothing. Sound is essential to me, I guess you could say it's an important energy source. It varies constantly, depending upon the mixture of said gasses and dusts and and nearby planets and debris. I eased myself through various nebulae and spent quite a bit of time in the one called Orion where I witnessed the birth and death of many a star. Imagine the trillions of particles I gathered there amidst that beauty, each one to eventually become flora, fauna, human, plant, animal, aquatic. Distributed throughout my surface, each developed and would eventually evolve to become one with their respective terrain and water body quite beautifully. All parts being perfect.

Moon finally found me and wouldn't let go and as we reconnected, it was I who fixated on her and wouldn’t leave her alone, the attraction strong and primal, the memory of loneliness not forgotten. This is my mother, after all. Over time, I had become the primary while her energy quietened. She gravitated to me as we continued to travel the galaxy until we found the great powerful energy source. It has been here that we've remained and the symbiosis between the Moon and myself has remained constant. I am her anchor and she regulates so very much of what happens to me, pure contentment. Well, except for the occasional upheaval where my very soul is nearly wrenched away from my body and therefore my very solid core is disrupted, distorted and disfigured. At these times, the surface is modified nearly beyond recognition and many precious lives are lost.

For the most part I am passive in the way I manage my ownself, there is a rhythm, some patterning, but for the most part it's random. I move water from deep within to many surface areas and withdraw it sending it elsewhere. I know it seems capricious, but that is me and with due respect to the grand ball of light that affects me well more than the moon, the sun is life-giving and destructive at the same time. Where the sun is my vital energy-giver, the moon is my rhythm-maker, my heartbeat.

As a human, one of billions now on a planet that is billions of years old. I'm a painter, or at least I like to think I am. I create nothing of significance, just little and sometimes very large canvases that sometimes start out as something and end up quite... different. I cannot paint without music, as a matter of fact I need music for just about everything. Even when I don't have my headphones on, music is a quiet whisper playing and keeping me content.

One night, while lying on my bed in the dark black, hoping to spark a bit of creative inspiration, I listened to Afternoon of a Faun and became astonishingly still. As the music came to an end, I was in a state of near floating for I don't know how long. It was so dark I had no bearings, but suddenly I was soaring, flying through the night sky, through the Milky Way and it's stars upon stars, clouds of dust and gasses, a multitude of planets both living and dying, and then there appeared a large ring of orange clouds surrounding the most beautiful blue sky ever created. I barely have the capability to express the feeling of great joy without bounds I had at approaching this great gift of the creator and I know I am a part of this, I come from this. Of course I am going to paint this, and to approximate the cobalt teal of the sky, I mix varying hues of phthalo green and phthalo blue and white with quite a bit of white hazing throughout. Surrounding, swirling and dancing gasses in magenta and cadmium orange; alizaron crimson and cadmium red medium; alizarin crimson and magenta; alizarin with dioxazine purple; cadmium orange and cadmium yellow medium; cadmium yellow light and cadmium yellow medium; and lastly, cadmium yellow light. These colors are all my colors.

As I reveled in the colors, imagining how I would paint this extraordinary experience, I became aware of the presence of my people, from my mother and father and sister, to the ancients. Those who were well-known and still powerful, to those who were peasants, some of whom are still starving. It was difficult for me to comprehend, to understand, were they saying something to me? I was so close to my mother in life and I could strongly feel her in this "world" and I knew she was aware of what I have been doing. She is extremely proud of me. My father is still the same as he always was, never saying much at all. My paternal great-great grandfather was pleased that I acknowledged his struggles in life and how he escaped the famine in Ireland to create solid roots in America. His wife isn't saying anything at all. Those of his ancestors that suffered in Ireland are still suffering, as I had said, caught in the grief of being deliberately starved. I deeply wish I could ease their souls, but I can't, because their pain was passed down the generations and must be understood, I guess to hopefully heal all.

Then, I woke up, back at home in my bed in a darkened room. But the memory has remained bright in my heart. This happened well before I knew about NASA and nebulas, but once they started putting their images out on the internet, I knew where I had gone that one dark night.