The Silent Song

 A silent song plays in the deep,
Some days it colors things drab,
depressed, disorganized, and disheveled...

Other days it is luminous, vibrant, radiating-
vibrating with the impulse to do, to go, to dare, to achieve.

The song cares not for my mantras,
my achievements,
my failures...

For something which is so essential to my being,
it seems completely indifferent to me.

I am learning to dance on the days where the song is slow,
when everything hurts,
swollen, sullen, rigid and rough.

Where the clouds, the rain, the world going insane,
all swells together, and it just seems too much....

Learning to seize the days when the orchestra swells.
The light expands, exposes, and transforms all things,
the simple beauty, the quiet awe, the raucous laughter of friends and strangers,
passing smiles, all green lights.

A silent song plays in the deep,
Some days it drains all things drab,
and on other days it is the wind which uplifts all things.

A painter by any other name:

 "You call yourself a painter?
 You don't even make your own canvas,
 how can you call yourself a painter if you dont stretch your own canvas and build your own frame?"

So away you go,
as if possessed,
the word and title of "painter" has consumed you,
and so you learn all the techniques
and all the secrets of frame building and canvas stretching.

 "Yes yes, nice canvas,
 but how can you call yourself a "painter" when you don't even make your own paints!"
 How preposterous!"

Your face contorts to a snarl,
how COULD you call yourself a painter, when you don't even make your own paints!
Again, possessed, fixated, and single minded,
you dive into the mysteries of colors,
clays, herbs, minerals, chemicals,
your study expands and integrates a seemingly vast array of disparate domains,
but by nature of your inquiry, they all meld into one-
To be wielded in your intellectual arsenal on your path as "painter"
 

 "Your canvas is nice,
 and your paints are passable,
 but you do not grow the plants which made the paint? 
 You did not excavate your own charcoal, clay, and stone?"
 
And so you become a farmer. Just as you had unknowingly became a woodworker, a botanist, a chemist, a geologist, and others.

You sit proudly feeling you have finally done it. You ARE A PAINTER. You go to stand, but, it takes longer now. The pains and rigidity of body have grown with years. As you slowly stand, your longtime friend says,

 "This is a truly beautiful place,
  you have access to all the materials you would ever need to paint,
  but I can't help to think,
 with all this time that you have spent learning all these other disciplines and techniques... 
 A TRUE PAINTER would have discarded such interests
  and thew themselves solely into their painting.
 They would have viewed any moment not painting as a complete and utter waste of time!"

Your eye twitches.