Breaking Stones and Laying Foundations – by the Isar River in Munich, Germany

Written 2 July

Gabriele Münter

When you start to realize that your life is like a scripted play. It’s all sketched out before you take your first breath. You fall in love with a narcissistic sociopath and think you’re a victim. And think when it happens again it’s some cruel trick of fate. And when it happens yet again you either need to change your memory to live delusively convincing yourself this is completely different from the other times, or face the fact that it’s the same old shit and the common denominator is YOU. How long can we keep up the charade? How long will we keep lying to ourselves only to play out the same tired drama? But I suppose a world willing to sit through Jurassic Park as though it were a brand new narrative is a world with a short term memory.

Sometimes I envy those who can live in such self-deceit, cuz I no longer can. I see my life like a chess board laid out, each piece trying to move me somewhere, trying to teach me something. But a pawn is a pawn is a pawn and it’s foolish to think the same tactic will get you somewhere new.

The patterns in my brain are paved in stone, and breaking the stones to rebuild new paths toward new destinations is painful and tedious. Not to mention scary. There is the fear of getting lost. Where does this direction lead? I’ve never been there.

So I’m traveling in Europe and seeing sights I’ve never seen. Sights unfamiliar, and trying to train myself to carve out new roads to higher destinations. And I’ll probably get lost. And I’ll probably get scared. But I’ll be damned if I travel down familiar roads that promised home only to lead me farther from who I really am.

Yesterday we visited Murnau and the home of famous expressionists who were inspired by the village near the Alps. Artists traverse new worlds all the time. They can’t be tied down to the world that most people think of as reality. I have always considered myself an artist. I have to create because I can’t accept the seeming reality of this world.

Something I’ve learned from watching  the world enough and watching myself enough is that this is a journey we take alone. I say that not just because I am jaded by my divorce but because of the inescapable persistence of the impermanence of everything in this world. We wake up in the morning and go to work and go about our lives as though we know what it’s for, as though we didn’t know at a moment’s notice it could all be swept away from under us. Most people grew up with brothers and sisters, parents, cousins. I grew up with great-grandparents, grandparents, great aunts. That was my immediate family. That was where I learned to love and be loved. Except for my grandfather and mother everyone has died. I also had 5 siblings – 4 from my father from a previous marriage and one from my mom. I now have 3 who are still living. Two died in my adult life. I have seen much death. I thought my wife and the family we would share together would be permanent. Wrong again. Life moves forward like a current and sometimes I wish I could swim backwards or get pulled under so I couldn’t see the surface with all its reminders of where I’ve been and what’s been taken from me.

But what HAS been taken from me? What have I lost, really? Just this- The illusion that anything actually belonged to me. Not even my own life belongs to me. I could get hit by a car or shot this very instant. I can’t control that. Nothing is mine. Surrendering to a higher power for me is survival.

Starnberger Lake

This doesn’t have anything to do with giving up. In fact I think acceptance makes me more mindful and when I’m more mindful I fight harder, give bigger. So here it is. My humble offering as I create through writing,  through art. My acceptance in my efforts to let go. I will make the most of each moment and let go of whatever the next moment brings.