I was humming a couple of songs today. It's something I haven't done in awhile, and I take it as a good sign. One that is still in my head is Carole King's You've Got a Friend. The notion of friendship and where it starts and how far it stretches has been on my mind recently as sails on the distant horizon.
Ok, songs and poems and images. One of the images in my head is of Claude Monet's ''Sunrise,'' which is, as irony would have it, a painting of boats on the horizon at dawn in the harbor at Le Havre. It was a painting he did two years before an exhibition of what came to be known as Impressionism--a term he disliked immensely. Critics chose Sunrise as the target of scorn for the style that Monet and colleagues used to show light.
Monet, not surprisingly, was subject to radical mood swings, which I think we would probably call bipolarism these days. When he was up, his work showed it. One of the problems he had was cataracts, which dimmed and muddied his sense of color, both in the way his sight was impaired, and in the way he painted. Look at a body of his work next time a Monet exhibition comes your way and see how light dimmed in his work and how it re-emerged after he had corrective surgery.
This wasn't about eye problems or even mood swings, but about friendships and where they can go. I am not really sure, despite many trials and errors. But I have a good feeling, which I am guarding like the eternal flame right now, about the dawn that I faintly perceive on the horizon.
Yes, I am preternaturally optimistic. But a serendipitous encounter recently brought something sweet at the conclusion of an otherwise not-very-good day. A return engagement is on the horizon too, so to speak, and I am looking forward to it as nothing I have anticipated in months.
So Carole King's lines about doubt and trouble and needing a helping hand are all valid, of course. And when I see or say the name in the title of this particular entry, I get the clear sense that the hand is being extended. It is the hand of friendship. It is light on the horizon. I pray that it will shine brightly for a very, very long time.
