Another long, dry spell for creative juices. Not that the 'Muse' was exactly silent . . . there have been many, many things that have (and do) beg for expression. I believe that sometimes silence shows an eloquent command of the language.
Maybe it has been Ecclesiastes operating: you know, a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking.
Many pundits have spent hours at their keyboards diagnosing and prescribing their assessments of these turbulent times. Facebook (or what a client once called Farcebook) and other social media provide wide open space for opinions ranging from insightful and erudite all the way to . . .well, recently I saw someone respond to another's post like this: "This is ignorant !" In general, I have chosen to refrain from the fray, at least for now. Still, I have had no desire to write witty banalities and other irrelevancies. But I have just wanted to write something , if for no other reason that to stir a few braincells. Hence, the swing above and what it is about.
That small photo is now on my office desk, having recently been fetched from my hospital office by a colleague. Because of Corona, I have been working from home since mid-March.
Taken by my daughter for a college photography class, the photo is of a corner of my late parents' back yard.
In the 1950's, my athletic younger brother erected the frame as a chinning bar for his fitness regimen for high school football. Sometime after his graduation, our father installed the swing. How much he and mom actually used it, I do not know. What does seem important now these years later . . . it was a place of respite . . . to slow down, to relax, to reflect and to plan amid the "got-to's" and the vicissitudes of life. And, at least as I project meaning onto the scene, a place for restoring mental and emotional tranquility and equilibrium in an often destabilized world.
Perhaps that is the 'lesson' for me. Dad often said, 'there is a time and place for all things.' I thought he originated the saying until I read Ecclesiastes. A time to speak and a time to 'sit in the swing'.
Satchel
