I just found out that my childhood home burned down today. In a beautiful foreign country, surrounded by the most loving people I could ever hope to meet on the other side of the world, all I can think about is what I left behind. I wonder how my family is, the emotional state of my mother, and feverishly running through my head are things I know we will never see again…
I have always felt that there is nothing more permanent than physically writing something down on a bright sheet of paper. Its like time, and philosophy, and magic come flooding out across the page. I think that’s why books created to help you succeed in life recommend it so. So many things in my life have involved paper… I worry that my Mom will never get over the loss, and yet here I sit thinking about the fact I will never get to show Isaac pictures of me as a tyke, my trip across the UK, or read him my journals that raved about my latest crush to the prettiest places I’ve been. I will never get the chance to inherit the trunk my great grandpa brought over from Finland, or see my beautiful figure drawings and black and white prints that were laboriously perfected. It feels a little empty when I think of the loss of the home I can attribute most of my memories and development, all the small things I meticulously kept to remind me of where I have come and where I am going. Still, more than anything there is guilt that I cannot be there for my family during this time… I suppose in a way, this blog is a tribute to the new way of life in the cloud. I just have to get over the misconception of digital inpermenancy and cheapening of the physical world. Now I have my own, cute little cloud. I think I’ll name him Stanton. Time for us all to move on a bit I suppose.
The worse part of all of this I think is the wait. I won’t know how bad, or what I have left till I come home. The unknown makes it hard to move on. There isn’t much I am really, truly proud of. I’m not independently wealthy or super successful yet and there is so much that was lost in this fire that my heart will pine after until new little works and creations come to fruition. I’m personally a woman of faith, and I can’t help but wonder if this sadness, the hurt you feel from your creation being ruined isn’t what God feels from us each time we lose our way. The loss of a creation is enough to drive anyone mad. If there is a heaven, I think we can all agree that Michelangelo would cry if anything ever happened to the Sistine…
Anyhow here I am on day 2 of this new adventure teary eyed and accepting preposterous amounts of hugs. Msg me if you’d like the address where you can post one to me. 🙂
As appeared in the Archbold Buckeye:
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