Still Sundays

July 4th.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

Earlier this week (I believe it was this week—due to soccer matches the days of the week are blurry) I thought I was going blind. I am fine. No worries.

I thought about Paul Gauguin and missed his art. I serendipitously found an article reviewing the biography Paul Gauguin: A Life by David Sweetman. The article had a quote from Gauguin’s revealing last letter to an old friend in Europe: “Artists have lost all their savagery, all their instincts, one might say their imagination…. I can say: no one taught me anything. On the other hand it is true that I know so little! But I prefer that little, which is of my own creation. And who knows whether that little, when put to use by others, will not become something big?“

I find comfort in my dark and light imagination. Diabolical and the divine. I am empowered by my instinct. I have seen and felt enough for many lifetimes. I could write blind.

I woke up this quiet Sunday morning—it’s noiseless because most aren’t awake yet and despite it being the 4th of July, New York City is still rolling around, not fully alert—and gently petted the idea of 4th of July.  I didn’t want to read any newspaper article (online or print) and definitely didn’t want to turn on the television to read or hear anyone’s baseless or researched opinions about what this day means. I just wanted to be still this Sunday morning, which happened to fall on the 4th, and accept my invisible and inaudible tears for the soldiers, young men and women who will not climb up the ranks, who joined the army etc. because they didn’t know what else to do, who will be ignored when they return, who are fighting an ideology that can’t be killed with bombs and guns.

Yesterday, after Argentina’s loss to Germany, then Paraguay’s loss to Spain, while running errands I ended up in Central Park near a percussion drum circle. It started off as one hypnotizing dancer moving in a trance—that communication between the synchronized beats of the heart, drum, and earth—followed by many.

One of these was this old man, wearing a colorful frock, some beads, clown hair, with a live parrot or some kind of bird on his head. I realize the picture below is not good but still wanted to share it. I instantly wanted to be around him and his colorful freedom to move. When he stopped dancing to grab some water and wipe the sweat from his bald head which was earlier covered by the clown hair, he told me during our exchange, “Live and let live can only work if you are living, baby.”

Yes, it only works if you are living. If you feel alive. If you are indeed doing what you want, if you have had the blessed burden and opportunity to explore what that means. Otherwise one person’s “let and let live” can very well include killing or judgments and all we have is an even more selfish society celebrating nothing.

Different friends have invited me to various different barbecue parties this evening to celebrate the 4th. I may join on the condition that I won’t miss Macy’s pyrotechnics overlooking the Hudson River. I am enamored with fireworks even if they never last long enough.

It’s the 4th.

Freedom to BE.

“None but ourselves can free our minds…”

Happy 4th of July.

~a.q.s.

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