Father wanted me to be a lawyer and Mother, an artist, so I ended up disappointing both. I became a writer.
One doesn’t actually become a writer though—it’s not a profession you choose—it’s more a matter of Fate.
Life chooses you—chooses you to be sensitive, creative and most of all, to suffer.
Before you can have a voice, you have to get your own pain. That’s the main qualification. You have to be unique and if you’re a writer like me, you’re like nobody else because you’re writing from your Self.
I’m musing about my life and art which are really two sides of the same coin, and doing it sitting in a house I didn’t build, along with everything else my parents left behind when they died on a wet road when I was just twenty years old.
That’s another thing I didn’t choose but was thrust upon me—Thank you, God.
And yes, I still believe and go to Mass, although not as often as I should, and I’m still failing to mesh my life with my beliefs, probably just like everybody else.
I can see my friend Bill Stiles smirking, shaking his head and repeating his usual comment on my life: a difference, in order to be a difference, must make a difference…
To which I reply, “O thank you, Learned Master, for enlightening me—but how has that worked for you?”
And he, of course replies, with a wry grin, “I’m still trying to figure that one out.”
Well, aren’t we all? We’re all just pilgrims on this earth journeying to God knows where and everyone else has to figure it out.
Q.E.D. Problem solved.
We all have to wait to die to know if we passed the test, but for the time being we’re all living in the land of the little while and doing what we can with what we have.
All during this prolonged diversion or divagation upon my Self, there’s been a ticking noise in the background I thought was the clock, and then the fire, but turns out it’s neither of those but rain on the leaded windows of this house.
I don’t mind storms or elementals, but I’m annoyed the house finds a way to amplify everything so I have to notice where I am, my surroundings, my heritage and the ancestors who refuse to leave me alone.
They say The Shadows is haunted and I partly believe it’s true, though it flies in the face of reason to say a house is inhabited by spirits. But I can definitely say it intrudes.
I never could get an answer from my parents why it was called The Shadows, the name engraved on the foundation stone along with the number, 1900, the year it was built.
I know only details of its distinguished provenance, having been built by Amos Thornton, my great grandfather, a Conservative senator who bequeathed it to his son and then to my father and last of all to me, the least deserving of them all.
I don’t like the house, but have no choice. It’s my personal Albatros.
I didn’t foresee my Thirties consisting of living in a grand but gloomy manse, echoing with secrets and memories.
Why wasn’t the house called, Shady Nook, or Walnut Grove? Why call it, The Shadows? There’s a troubling note in that name.
Neither my father, Marcus, nor Emilia, my mother, would ever tell me, and I’m sure they knew the answer to that question. Their silence was proof enough there was a dark explanation.
Much as I would like to be free of this burden and sell the house, I'm bound to the tradition of passing it down to my children…
It's more a curse than an inheritance and certainly one I would not inflict on anyone, if I had a say, but don't.
Welcome to my world of quiet desperation and perennial doubt.
