to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.
— Woody Allen
The Reverend Richard Collins.
Three years since I left the priesthood and the title on the letter seemed so foreign, typical of the trickle of mail that still hinted at my past.
Richard Collins Fine Art.
The next letter got it right and reminded me what the last three years achieved—a gallery with studio above and loads of north-facing windows—a huge space filled with the scent of paints and a great place to relax in drumming rain.
The problem was, I couldn’t enjoy the elements from within the shelter of a downtown gallery/studio.
Two words were obsessing me then: compartmentalized and sequestered.
The former described how I was feeling—
Tired of blasé, disinterested stares and polite questions—idle chitchat, and the small tedious gallery where my paintings hung…
Tired of black November streets fraught with threads of rain, that were an inconvenience to opera goers, but a place where I wished to stop and linger and set up an easel, but couldn’t…
Tired of waiters bringing plates requiring obligatory tips and tempting me to ask overwhelming questions such as the relevance of white shoulders, furs, haunting perfumes, beads and pearls and scurrilous matters of no final importance…
In short, I was tired of it all and in need of redemption—
All of which brought me to the second word of note—sequestered.
I wanted desperately to leave behind bare branches of maples spread against the sky like nerve patterns…
To strike out on an entirely different path of being…
To be out in the elements with the wild sky and as little shelter as would keep the wind from tipping my easel and the rain off my canvas.
Yes, I knew then, what I know now…
I knew back at the beginning of October I should have flown south with the birds and never returned.
And it took me until mid-November, but finally…Anna Maria Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast—and here I was.
“So, here you are,” she laughed—her mouth a dark shadow in the somber light.
I regretted telling Claire the story of my life—she’d use it against me one day I was sure. But we had been lovers, and something was required of me, but whatever it was, she wanted more.
But what did I want? I wasn’t sure. Maybe the same thing that had drawn me here to the Gulf—an elemental—‘a thunderstorm in your hand,’ she joked.
Perhaps, she was right, but something else as well—something intangible and elusive as a naked arm of lightning against a night cloud. Now, that was elusive—something I could never hold in my hand at all.
As for Claire and I, we were definitely winding down, ending inevitably, not dramatically, but gradually, as a candle guttering out. Was it ennui, familiarity, or a dearth of real passion?
Once again, I could never really be sure of anything at all.
I saw her less and less frequently, until finally, one sunny day she showed up at my porch, a pitcher of margaritas in her hands, and we talked it out…
“It hasn’t worked for us, has it, Richard?”
I couldn’t lie, “No, I’m afraid it hasn’t worked out at all.”
“Can we still be friends?” she asked it in her little girl voice she knew disarmed me.
“I don’t see why not—we both like margaritas,” I smiled.
And so we were friends and saw each other now and then, with no uncomfortable silence between us.
But I was feverish with longing for something more than the waves—there was a hole inside me and despite how much I wanted the lonely sea and the sky it couldn’t fill because there was something else outside me I still needed to find.
And I was on a quest to satisfy my restless mind.