The Mag #132 Claustrophobic Shades

THE MAG

Claustrophobic Shades

Big Room, 1948, by Andrew Wyeth


 

Once upon a lake there was a recluse who never left his house.

       This one big room was a reminder of why our marriage failed.  What ever happened to your chair you'd never leave, for fear of discovering life beyond?  Perhaps it followed you?  A bleak and stuffy parlor, empty of laughter and vacant of any tender footsteps.  I see our two slender candle sticks never to hold fire still wait in hopeless abandon. 

        If only you'd agreed to install french doors leading to a balcony overlooking a terrace.  Never mind the color, or these porous walls and worn parquet floors.  Even the brick fireplace couldn't soften the uniquely masculine feel of this big room.  Two years later, and still only your family photographs adorn the mantelpiece.   Your few desires visible yet, reflecting your subtle, feelings comparable to the colors of the desert within your soul. 

      Just standing in the center of this big room, my memory of it feels like it belongs to someone else.   My living outside these walls, has  untwisted that bitter knot once living inside me, and made big room for the sweet wines of life.  My only wish is that somebody has the fighting sense to breathe new life between these walls; tending the light, with life living around their feet.
  
The story of his life was simple, and it went like this.

Thus he struggled, by every method to keep his light shining before men- (Henry David Thoreau) 

All the while she lived in darkness and fled for light of her own.



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