Visitation at Twilight
The Observer
Insight is whole.
When it punctures mind’s sky
We get a glimpse,
We realize the stars
Penetrate our artificial globe
Like truth, after long sleep.
But expression drains the mystery,
Outcry relieves, song reveals,
Even intellect gapes and babbles,
Releasing what should be caught--
Why seek
Applause or attack--neither
Improves upon the now.
Virginia Woolf
Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.
“Modern Fiction,” 1919
Elizabeth Buchman (writing)
This image of the Visitation arrived in my AIMail just now: The sun has set behind dark, quiet hills. The disk is like a great lunar apparition, but it does not radiate as does the moon; its light is self-contained, and its duration can be short or long. Rather than coming on and fading out, it blinks on and then off. And it does not travel in the sky. It stillness seems to still the earth, and moving time becomes a suspended moment.
As an still image, it can be contemplate at your leisure only when it has been caught by the camera. Then one can admire its patterns and imagine things about it. But when you witness it live, surprise holds your breath and “insight is whole, puncturing the mind’s sky,” as the commentator writes.
The timing of this one for me is like a single stroke of a giant gong; a sound that does not diminish, and while it lasts it seems to open the gates of wonder in which there is no trace of fear. Or it is like the space beyond the gate from which it has come and to which returns. And the moment of its arrival italicizes the moment just before it came, as if it appeared in answer to or in support of a spontaneous motion of my heart. A yes!
And so, in the afterglow of this Visitation with its force to strengthen my mood into resolve, I have put Hari to rest in his kennel and sit down to write. I have time.
Precious the time I have.
In the paradoxically private and public, live and mediated world in which Horace and I met and shared our lives, I am conscious, as I write, of being overheard. Once I hit send, this document flies out of my control. So, I am complying with something that feels, in the end, like a sharing.
Much of the life Horace and I have has not been unshared with the world, but in this moment, I choose to be witnessed. Why? Because I have come to trust not just that what I write will not be exploited, but that what I am going through may make someone I shall never know feel less alone.
As I write Horace awaits the results of the tests, and we have agreed that in this meanwhile we will enjoy our time together. We are both strong in that regard, stoical I suppose is a word for it, but, actually, it’s simply a choice to savor the time, the cup of coffee, the stroll, the touch and the silences. And, of course now, Hari with his dear, distracting, demanding, amusing puppiness.
We come to this capacity to appreciate life in large part through our aging towards the end of it. If there is a wisdom that comes from death’s approach, it is to know to attend to the preciousness of time, the gift of it. More and more Horace and I feel that nothing can or should be taken for granted, and, as a result, we notice things that formerly would have been camouflaged in the ordinary. Appreciation for small, trivial things leads to gratitude. We can walk, hand in hand, smiling into the world.
Still, with that said, in this interim between the tests and their verdict, I cannot help undergo these spells of what I think is called “anticipatory grief”. What would be my life without oHorace? Some part of me, which I indulge here, is preparing for the worst, though I know that if he receives a death sentence, I will bend a knee.
The insight that has come of late is that when I cease taking anything in life for granted, then expectation, disappointment, and anxiety no longer dominate my mind, and whatever comes next can be seen as a visitation. A visitation of the sort I mean is, by definition, unforeseen and time-sensitive. To live in the Here/Now is always to be receiving what comes next rather than seeking to prepare for of fashion it, or hold on to what is already here.
This has been the effect of this year of Visitations on me and I believe on Horace. A year ago, I never would have believed I would find a love like this. Now I understand I did not find it, but it found me. Love has paid me a visit. Did I deserve it? I cannot say I did. But I see that deserving has no place in a world of visitations. Can I make it last? Of course not. Love is not under my control. “Life giveth and Life taketh away. Blessed is the name of Life.” And Life cannot even be named. “Even intellect gapes and babbles.”
So what do I see I know as I reread what I have written?
It is so simple: Everything is a visitation. As such each brings one to the next moment of one’s life, and, as well, invites reflection on where one had just been. In the moment of arrival, the visitation flashes me into the next awakening. Here, now, what? And my being shifts into receiving. But for me there is, also, a sense of where I was just before the visitor appeared. And when I look back, I can see that each visit of Life, each gift, has ordered the past as if it led towards this next step. I see I am free to receive.
My faith in Life requires no hope, no creed, no sanction, no God. There is no outside place from which to know. I am in the river, and there is a place in the river’s current, here at the very center, where the flow is strong, where I can feel the immensity and at the same time utterly let go to it.
All sense of being separate is lost.
I am living into my next incarnated life (and in this life I have had already many incarnations). This one is my life with Horace. I do not take it for granted; I weep for the gift of it. Precious this time I have.
--Jonathan Reeve Price and Peter Asher Pitzele
To explore the sequence of Visitations:
Visitation on a Clear Day
Visitation in the Smoke
Visitation in the Haze
Visitation Arriving at Dawn
Visitation on the Rio Grande
Visitation on a Maine Summer Day
Visitation in Brooklyn
Visitation in Midtown
Visitation at Night
Visitation--Skyscraper with Pigeon
Visitation--Blocking Traffic
Visitation at Hudson Yards
Visitation on the High Line
Visitation Under Brooklyn Bridge
Visitation Across the Hudson
Visitation in Central Park
Visitation at Rush Hour
About Jonathan
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/jonathanreeveprice
MuseumZero site: www.museumzero.art
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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/41600924.Jonathan_Price
About Peter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peter.pitzele/
Scripture Windows: Toward a Practice of Bibliodrama, with Susan Pitzele
Our Fathers' Wells: A Personal Encounter With the Myths of Genesis
