Again

Today the haunting began. I can go only so long without writing or reading, or thinking the thoughts of beginnings and endings. Updike liked centers. I don’t. The centers are suffocating, stagnant, the places of boredom and illness. We stir around within them, buying things, sleeping. Sleeping. Sleeping may be the singular warning of middles. That’s where you can hear the other voices and you drown.

Anne Packard (1933) Barca a remi sul blu

In this painting you cannot see the line on the horizon. You might think you can, but you cannot hold it. It looks as if it should be one solid blue, top to bottom. But it is not. The water ends where the sky begins, though they merge. It isn’t just the horizon line, you see, it is also the boat. The boat, and the rower, the oars, traverse the blue and say: this is it, this  is the water through which we travel. And this is where we are.