Her Summer Light
Mademoiselle, you are a woman not finished — nor even as you are, like the river is never the same, but never ends, you too are always becoming.
Sunshine, beauty, a brushstroke, and a spirit caught between earth and heaven. Renoir painted the future. Somehow, he painted her.
Chemin montant dans les hautes herbes has been on my mind lately —
Moonflower’s favorite.
Here is what it whispered to me.
A summer day in the French countryside,
a century before my people saw day.
She moves through tall grasses
beneath her orange umbrella —
a picture of peace.
She is not hurried,
she is not lost;
she is in transition,
place to place —
her heart brimming with
pride and love,
as a mother’s should.
The artist snatched this moment
from the universe
and held it in stasis
for all generations since —
motion and stillness
caught between earth and heaven.
Light splashes yellow and warm
across the hillside,
and we can feel the sweat gather
in those places politeness will not name.
She hums, as hum the grasses
and the very air.
Destination is not her goal,
but the passage itself —
from place to place,
showing her children
the world as she knew it.
Only ascent and descent,
like Jacob’s ladder —
only this angel’s mission:
to spread love and goodness
while she waits for her Lord’s arrival.
This road a prayer she walks
without looking back,
without regard.
For she knows that just over the crest
lies the real life —
the kind of life where her heart
and mind
might finally find acceptance.
Where she will finally feel seen.
Feel whole.
Perhaps this is why Chemin montant dans les hautes herbes
is so favored. It is not the color or the texture,
but her understanding of Renoir’s vision.
Lover of art, she knows the secret:
a great work is not to be owned,
but entered — participated in —
joining the cosmic energy
from which it was born.
And I feel her energy there —
stochastic and ordered at once.
She carries the vibration of life,
a brilliance by which everyone near her
is energized.
Walking calm and whole and loving,
yet charging the air around her
with every step.
How I love it.
It is irresistible.
She is.
Who among us does not dream of a walk
through the French countryside?
Well, perhaps the French themselves —
but even many of them would agree:
it is the sort of moment great writers write about,
and hack writers pontificate upon.
One day, your Wolf will walk there.
Perhaps not tomorrow.
But one day,
I’ll climb over a low stone wall
while the sweat collects in my dark places,
and walk down a hill — or up one —
to a place where I’ll lie in the grass
and fall asleep watching clouds drift by languidly.
And in that stillness,
I will know what Renoir knew —
that beauty is never still,
only briefly at rest.
And somewhere among those tall grasses,
beneath that same orange umbrella of light,
I know she walks still —
the one who taught me how to see color again.
Not the color of pigment,
but of patience,
of laughter shared through distance,
of longing turned to bloom.
She is both the road and the ascent,
the hum in the air
and the hush between heartbeats.
And when the sunlight tilts just right,
I catch her there —
a flicker of periwinkle,
a pulse in the wind,
a moonflower open in full day,
refusing to close.
#essay #memoir #journal #osxs #100daystooffset #writing #travel
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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