fruits of solitude
Just like mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of healthy fungal networks, paintings are the fruiting bodies of my solitude. Disturbing solitude has the same effect that tilling soil has on fungal networks: bad.
Inevitably, the “post vaccination life” earlier this year (which presently feels like a bit of a tease) was a stark reminder. I felt it’s toll on my desire to create. I need a cornucopia of undisturbed mycelium to produce frustratingly few dinky mushrooms.
So I found myself thriving most in 2020 when solitude was sanctioned, thriving amidst a maelstrom of death and decay (… like saprophytic mycelium omglol).
How should we, degenerates, pray for our predicament? For many years, I have prayed for a greater capacity to love without knowing whether an answer to that prayer would entail a radical transformation of my “fallen nature”, or a radical acceptance of the way I have been created. Should I pray for change–to desire connection with fellow human beings more than selfish creative endeavours? Or should I pray for acceptance–of who I am, without guilt, without shame?
I’m drawn to the possibility that transformation and acceptance isn’t a zero sum dichotomy, but the carefully constructed formula of exemplary community I grew up with leaves so little room for either. Ironically, it has been in the wilderness where I have been able to find delight in, show up for, and be in community with fellow human beings in ways that are befitting of my self.
Perhaps, as creation, I, too, am the fruit of another’s solitude; and so, perhaps, solitude begets community.