Man in Cafe
If someone asked me to paint my life on a canvas for them- they’d find a man sitting outside a cafe staring into the abyss. He’d probably live somewhere above the sound of ceramics colliding with the sink and afternoon chatter that meshed together into a soothing ambience. It would be his idea of an ocean sound; something to both wake up to and go to sleep that he could rely upon like the tides coming in and going out. He’d have a one bedroom “flat,” and they’d call it a flat because he’d probably live in London. Or maybe he’d return to Tokyo and it would a similar setting, just more neon. Handing over the canvas to the person who asked, if they knew me even in the slightest, they’d nod and say “Yep, that’s you.” The details wouldn’t really matter really. They’d just know that from that one picture, they could paint the rest if they so wished. Perhaps the little white card just underneath the canvas would say something like, “Man in cafe in cityscape 2012 Oil.” Say I was to bet on my life being an image for anyone to identify me with, I’d push in my life savings- the whole $4.12. The point being, a portrait of my life so easily identifiable with who I was and where I was going could not be so starkly different than the picture that is today. I’m not saying we sit within a painting our whole lives, but if we did, I’d embarrassingly had been living in the wrong one.
I find the strongest case for God in my own life to be the fact that it takes forever to know ourselves; as if we must acknowledge the complexity it must be to be designed in a way that, if we could, would have been much more simplified. Couldn’t we then just know ourselves and get on with it? Why must we take such length to meet ourselves, to be surprised by our interests, to be pushed and nudged towards things outside of what we’d so wish to be? I cannot force my interests. I’m drawn into the sound of a symphony and can think of a film for days. If not designed to be, then it would seem silly that we must uncover ourselves. Why has it taken me so long to discover the character I had once painted would be so different than the current setting I preside in? I’m growing into something- something I could not have seen even within my own being. I am the subject matter and yet I could not see. Something outside of myself pulled me towards myself.
Now I must admit that I am in a cafe- with a cap, cardigan, and scarf on. I stare outside towards the abyss but not entirely. The cobblestone streets of London are not romantically lining the streets of old. The crowds in the thousands are not swimming like beautiful orange and red koi from one place to the next like in Tokyo. There’s a pick up truck parked outside and the town is quaint and charming; something out of a Hallmark movie. The kind of movie I’d never watch but the kind of movie I find myself in. I admit to wrestling with the mere fact that I am here- ironically feeling now as though I am not in the right canvas. There must be a mistake. Sure, the current frame I am in now is much better in every way, even if it was not I who painted the scene. Yet being placed in a land that I did not choose is not exactly easy. I have found that there’s nothing suitable here that existed within the past. The land grows a different kind of crop, one that does not recognize any plant from neighboring regions. I woke up with this odd sentence in my head, “You came here to die.” Though this may sound like an alarming threat, it was not. It was spoken with a smile- as if death were the beginning and I could not yet see what was coming.
The image attached to this blog came to mind while writing this. A young man sketched this of me and brought it over for me to see. I believe I was even sitting in the same exact chair that I’m seated in now. “Man in cafe in small town 2024 Pencil.” If I wrote my own story, (and I have tried) it would all look different. I’m happy that I don’t so that it can all be better. Even if the plot of my own story is death. I continue to die so that I can continue to live. I have come to Tulsa to die, and in that death, something new will blossom.