"The problem with mankind
is that we cannot go into our rooms and be quiet."
Ron Eyre, The Long Search
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| The fireplace in Homer's cottage |
In this room in his Prout's Neck (ME.) cottage, Winslow Homer retreated from the world and a universe opened before him. You can see his etchings in the window panes! Here in the midst of wild roaring winters, the artist fired his creativity from living on the edge of the ocean. In this place--the sea as he experienced it, emerged from his brush.
There is a sense in which we live with the ocean of life roaring around us---there is no virtual reality to the hustle and bustle of life rolling around us. Yet, where is the room that we can go to, the crackle of the fire to stir the coals in us, to flame up what matters? Could we paint it, describe it, smell it like the ocean?
Too much to say that the death of any age is the disconnect between our lives and the natural world. Faulker did come to that conclusion, however, and that may give us pause to go into our own rooms and sit quietly to see and experience worlds that open for us--which fire life.
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