"She remembered sitting on the patio of that restaurant under the net awning, the sun warming a new life into her and firing her imagination and experiencing what it must have been like to sit there a few hundred years ago in that light and listen to Vivaldis strings singing and vibrating through that air, and Gabrielis brass canzones pulsing from the nearby towers, and sit in a cathedral with the sun bursting through the stained windows and gleaming on the carved wood pews listening to Monteverdi Mass. It was then for the first time in her life, that she felt alive, really and truly alive, like she had a reason for existing a purpose in her life and she had realized that purpose and would now pursue and dedicate her life to it. All that summer and fall she painted, mornings, afternoons, evenings, then she walked around the streets that were still echoing the music of the masters and every stone every pebble seemed to have a life and reason of its own and she somehow felt though vaguely, a part of that reason.
Some nights she would sit in a cafe with other young artists and poets and musicians and who knows what else drinking wine and talking and laughing and discussing and arguing and life was exciting and tangible and crisp like the clear Mediterranean sunlight.
Then as the grayness of winter slowly seeped down from the north, the energy and inspiration seemed to ooze from her as paint from a tube and now when she looked at a bare canvas, it was only a bare canvas, a piece of material stretched over a few pieces of wood, it was no longer a painting waiting to be painted. It was just a canvas. She went further south. Sicily. North africa. Trying to follow the sun to the past, the very recent past, but all she found was herself. She went back to Italy, gave away all her paintings, equipment, books, and what nots. She went back to the restaurant on the hill in Naples and sat there for endless hours for a week, looking at Vesuvius, Capri, the bay, the sky, trying, with the desperation of dying, to reawake those old feelings, trying with jewels and sparkling wine to rekindle the flame that half fired her imagination just a short lifetime ago, and though the wine sparkled in the sunlight, and the moonlight, the once blazing fire was extinguished and Marion finally succumbed to the stone coldness within her. She shivered as she remembered leaving Italy and coming back to the states, back to the grossness of her family, back to the dulled brilliance of her life. She shivered again, involuntarily, as she sat on the couch, looking back through so many miserable unhappy yesterdays, then smiled and hugged herself tighter, not from coldness nor fear nor despair, but joy. All that was in the near and distant past. Over with, Gone, Once more her life had reason... purpose. Once more there was a direction for her to follow. A need for energies. She and Harry were going to recapture those blues of the sky and sea and feel the warmth of desire that had been rekindled. They were going to a new renaissance." -Requiem For A Dream, Hubert Selby Jr.
Joy is an addiction. Passion is an addiction.
It is not the purpose of life to feel joy and passion every second of the day.
The purpose of life is to reach the point where you can drink in those moments of pure and delirious love, and creativity, and inspiration, and hold them with you. To take those moments with you to funerals and, divorce courts and, vets offices and, bankruptcy lawyers, to hold those moments in your heart to fuel you on. And to always strive to put that immense pleasure into everything you do. To release that love into the world, so everyday, in some shape or form, maybe that love will come back to you.
Who am I to know the purpose of life?
I suppose we could all agree I have much life to live. Many staple joys to live through.
Though I possess clarity I lack wisdom.
Have I reached the point of clarity where I carry my joy with me?
No. I still succumb to the addictions of everyday life. Some not so everyday.
My only savior is clarity. I have no strength.
