What a relief to return to my fantasy world of Hy-Art after a week spent as if Joe Biden was going to call me at any moment to help in debate preparation, and I had to read EVERYTHING. As it was, I found www.truthout.org and The Huffington Post to be indispensable sources of news. And of course, Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann are national treasures.
I went out to dinner with a good friend last night, and it somehow clicked what September 5th meant to me. It was the day I left for my year abroad in France in 1975, a month shy of 17. It astounds me that it was 33 years ago. And I realized with that calculation, I am exactly now the age my Mother was when I left for France (which sounds like abandonment, but she arranged the whole thing.)
I was already actively gay, but my parents did not know it (my father suspected) until January of 1976, when my mother announced she was coming to France to see me during her February break from teaching. By then I had moved in with Rene, who was 29. This seems impossibly young to me now, but it was 12 years older than I was then, so a dramatic enough detail added on top of the considerable shock when a well-meaning cousin decided to tell my Mom the truth about me back in New York, a month before her trip.
Like most 17-year olds, I thought if you did adult things you were an adult. It took years--if ever--for my maturity level to catch up with the complexity of my choices. I certainly came out early by any estimation, for about a decade, I was always the younger one. Then for about anoither decade, it could go either way. Then, suddenly it seemed, I was almost always the older one.
The math that has come to haunt me of late is that I'm going to be equidistant from 35 and 65. That seems just entirely wrong. For the first time, I might be older than the President. That hurts, but I'll take one for the team.
I'll tell you what will make a really interesting book, in about a decade. "The Ballad of Bristol and Levi." About 10 days ago, they were just two teenagers with problems, and now their personal lives have blown up in a big way. This must be surreal beyond belief for them. Frankly, it reminds me of that trip to France my Mom did make, that was so dramatic I made my first student film about it.
The thing is, you think the rest of your life is going to be that intense, and it changes. You grow up, and you develop layers. They are necessary to survive, but there's something gone too. The virginity you really lose isn't physical at all.
MCO 2008
P.S. Manet is the camouflaged women, Pissaro the village landscape.
so the woman on the hill is acting as if she is just part of the landscape, but she sticks out like a sore thumb????
hmmmmm....
I just thought it was cool the way the trees looked like her hat. Can't read in too much to some of these hy-arts.
I can so relate to the aging thing. I came out at 18... well sort of... and my first lover was 27. He was soooo much older at the time. It's hard to imagine he would now be 58 or 59, which relative to my 50 years is not that much older any more. Unlike you, there was no transition from being the youngest to the oldest in my crowd. I just awoke one day and became aware that things had changed. I was shocked, I tell you. Worse was when I was using. There's nothing attractive about an addict whose age is spiraling upward while his life is spiraling downward.
We are both fortunate to be at this age relatively intact and to have the perspective that we do. That's enough to make it a great age to be.
With each passing birthday, I find myself a tad regretful that the intensity of living that enveloped me in youth is no longer there. I feel a bit wiser and less inclined to leap without looking, but I do have some nostalgia for a time when my heart always led, when I dived in head first without ever questionning how deep or shallow the waters were, and when the fear of drowning only gave me pause, but never stopped me from entering the water.
I like Rod's observation about the Hy-art. Once you release your art into the world, it engages in its own conversations with the viewer, regardless of your intended communication. I think that's what I like most about creative expression in any medium. It adds to my understanding of your intent to know that you found it cool the way that the trees looked like her hat, but I find the Rod's communion with the work equally compelling.