gravitational pull | reverse threading

it’s a classic story. an age-old story.

it was after a photo shoot – for pictures with which to list it for sale – that i discovered it.

this old rocking chair had been with him for decades. his studio chair, he bought it in a colorado mountain town and it traipsed along with him, re-homing down south, to los angeles, to seattle. it was one of the few items – outside of paintings – that made the cut when we moved him here in a budget truck.

when it arrived here it became a studio chair once again, tucked into his basement studio next to the rocking chair in which i rocked my babies.

but now, in the process of cleaning out and going through, he has decided it has run its course. this beautiful chair needs restoring. caning is missing and, if someone rathers finished over organic, it needs sanding and some good varnish. with really good bones and a decade of life-patina, it’s ready to move on.

we brought it upstairs for the shoot and i took photos of each angle and turned leg. doing research on mission style rockers like this i came across where to find identifying information. so i went back out into the living room to look more closely.

and there it was.

the word “wisconsin”.

to say i was a bit stunned would be an understatement.

diving into it, i discovered that this chair was made by the wisconsin chair company in port washington – just up the lakefront from us sometime around the early 1900s.

this chair – after a century of domestic travel – had come home.

i asked him if he wanted to keep it – knowing this new detail of the chair’s history. he said it was still time for the chair to move on, to be loved into renewal.

i’m wondering if this rocking chair had anything to do with david finding home – after a lifetime of living other places. if this chair somehow had strong enough ties to this place that it created the circumstances in which we met. if this chair had a gravitational pull back to wisconsin so strong that it brought david here, instead of the reverse. if this rocking chair brought him home.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

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fall is coming on. there is no denying it. everything is starting to wane.

the sky is starting to gray. the corn will be soon plowed under and, one of these days, the cabbage fields will have to turn over, the yield from their crop slowed to a stop. the colors are changing.

george winston recorded an album called autumn. you listen inside his wistfulness as he toys with the emotions of the changing. the album was released in 1980 and, for me, that was a distinct time of heading into fallow.

some fallows last longer than the seasons and the tilted axis of the earth seems to evade warming sunlight. the seeds gather strength in the ground – centered in us, even without us nourishing them. and eventually, ever-so-slowly sometimes, the earth tilts back toward the sun and the orbital horizon is rebirth, spring.

it seems to happen fast – the waning. the ebb and flow of the cold. there is nothing as constant as change and, so, we need remember that in times of fallow. the tide – like the corn and the cabbage – will come and go, come and go. an ancient story.

we join hands with others on our path – they are quite possibly on the same ebb and quite possibly will be in the flow with us as well. they stand with us, they encourage us, they surprise us. the shapes of others appear – like revelations – from out of the mist of our fixed frame of reference. everything looks different.

standing on this side of the corn, gazing into the grayness of sky, the dance of color as it fades, i am finding – with much gratitude – that there are others standing right there with me, gazing as well. the wistful tugs at us; gravitational effect far from the sun but with promise of the pull. we stand still, roots under our feet, steadfastly hand-holding, looking at the horizon as it shifts.

and time passes and the seasons flow and flow and, eventually, the axis finally – at long last – tilts and the fallow ends and the seeds that were planted so long ago break through the frozen ground and we know that we have – together – affected even the tiniest change.

and winter comes as we stoke up, readying ourselves for the riches of spring.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: gravitational pull

the chair that brought him home. [kerri’s blog on merely-a-thought monday]

this side of the corn. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

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