ABSENCE/PRESENCE, FLEX SPACE, TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY, 2014

Picture if you will an apocryphal scene from the Victorian age.  Our protagonist has returned home after his arduous voyage and adventurous romp across enchanted lands.  He stands before the warmth of family, a highball in one hand, the other arm resting on the fireplace mantle; he waxes poetic on time and space.

 Ahhh Elizabeth.  What can I say?                                                                                   When I am at home I dream of the road.                                                                     When I am on the road I dream of home.

This picaresque moment is the backdrop for a timeless drama in which absence and presence are dueling protagonists – pulling, clawing and scheming for my attention. 

How else to explain a crack in consciousness while in the ecstatic throes of grandfatherhood, swinging a three-year-old goddess through the breaking waves of the Pacific, a moment I’ve anticipated for months and I’m suddenly walking along a different and very distant shore, listening to tales of revolution and Soviet conspiracies. 

And the reverse; Walking the steps of renunciation during the full moon festival, expiating sins and corporal folly, completely in the moment, cradled in the kindness of thousands and the visual splendor of Shwedagon.  And then I’m gone, transported to genuine enlightenment at home on the porch swing with Jerry’s laughter and the rapture of domesticity.  Only the linguistic shrieks of women hawking Buddhist Enlightenment Kitsch can bring me back to the present and gilded moment.  Presence or absence.  Or both states at once. Lost in the chasm between here and there.