The 10th Muse

A line from the song by the Grateful Dead keeps going through my head lately, "what a long strange trip its been..." Thinking about the long strange winter it has been all at the same time I see the bright yellow blur of petals swaying outside the window from the corner of my eye. Life is like that everything all at once, if we are lucky we see it all.

My brother passed away early in the new year. While in New Jersey attending to his funeral and belongings, we discovered a storage locker full of his paintings, more than expected. We could not take all of them, so we chose our favorites. This is one of mine pictured here; I've called it "The 10th Muse." If we still had temples and shrines devoted to the Gods & Goddesses, I would be laying flowers at the feet of Mnemosyne, the Greek Goddess of memory. She is so important to the Greeks' culture, inspiring and reminding its people to remember where they come from. Traveling back home physically and now with the help of Mnemosyne, I am revisiting memories of the past, both light and dark, and realize all are packaged within this body's ecosystem. The body faithfully holds the material like a chrysalis of sorts, waiting to be transformed and released into something. The body, being a material thing, just cannot hold all that spirit on its own; it requires a tool for transformation. We can thank Mnemosyne once more, for she is also the Mother of the muses who inspire these human forms to create, transforming memories and ideas into art, moving spirit through the body into other forms, releasing the body from the efforts of holding all that. There are nine muses named in epic poetry and many painted by artists up through the centuries. I have always wondered why none of them were named as guardians of painting and the visual arts in particular, so in my imagination, my brother was connected with that other muse not spoken of or hailed in epic poetry; she quietly graced his life.

Sometimes the light's all shinin' on me

Other times I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it's been

Truckin', I'm a goin' home

Whoa whoa baby, back where I belong

Back home, sit down and patch my bones

And get back truckin' on

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