Out of Focus

I've been working in a huge abandoned building, preparing it for an art exhibition.  Finally, my work is done and I get out in my canoe on the big river that lies east of where I live, some ways north of where that river meets the ocean, where it is sleepy and fresh.  Some leaves have changed, some have not, but the best marker of fall, the honking of Canada geese looking for food in the stubble of a nearby farm field is present.

Several times while I was working in that cavern of a building, other artists asked if it was haunted.  I always gave a short and direct answer, "No, it's just empty"....an answer that ended that line of questioning.  People looking for spooks, spirits, haunts...It doesn't work that way.  Look for spirits and the imagination will create them...but they will only be imagination.

I'm out in the big river, perched at the edge of the twin islands, next to an otter track that is dragged out in the sand, crossing the tip of one island and into the channel between.  I'm in the water with its swirls and currents and eddies, and shallows and dead heads.  I'm in the water with its spirits.  But, I won't see them today.  It has been too long out of the water.  My senses are dulled, my perception out of focus, my eyes not fully open.

It will come.  Give it time, it will come.