Children of the Wolf

May 5th - 7th, 2022

“Two Brothers” - 2022

More so than her naive ecstasy that greeted me at the door, I was immediately struck by Reu's soft coat. I would gently graze the silken surface of her fur, which paradoxically felt like it had been both freshly groomed and was also wild and untamed. It was a clear indicator of her youth; a fresh, freely-flowing garment birthed from the womb, untangled by the explorations of life. Like Nellie, her colors were of the earth. Across the surface of her body was a primary brown so rich and dark that apart from a trick of light it was indistinguishable from black. Dipped in each foot and crawling up her youthful, powerful legs was a wooden peanut brown with hints of a darker orange amber. This color also bathed her cheeks and the overall sides of her profile, receding up into the inner flaps of her ears. The dark black/brown of her coat converged between her brows and down her snout, accented by a pale, yellowish ivory that dotted each eyebrow. The tip of the nose was a moist black, but surrounding it, the peanut faded into an off-white, which could also be seen resting on her chin as well as beneath her paws and down her chest.

Reu at this point was still a malleable creature in the snares of her infantilism, and so her personality was perpetually curious and unrestrained, but she had a glimmer of intelligence that I could discern was being fostered in her by Ted and Kara. Upon receiving attention she danced in eagerness, but if she had to be ignored or if she was truly tired, she diverted her energy to the cats, and finally inwards to herself, until exhausted she would lie sprawled out in various corners throughout the house, waiting for something new to present itself or for the familiar call to bed.

Juneau seemed the most willing to join Reu in her great scramble, Nellie less so. She tolerated some tussling from the child until it was too much and she'd dart into some hidden nook. Winston enjoyed spectating from a distance, but gave a cautious warning hiss if Reu approached too close, followed by a reprimanding swat if his gentle cry was not heeded. As with his other children, he had little desire for direct interaction with these bursts of energy, but still found himself orbiting the battleground from afar, surveying and perhaps feeling content in the presence of others. His affection was reserved for quiet moments, which Reu could not yet understand or navigate with diplomacy. In these introspective hours, he lounged in the fog of a lethargic afternoon haze with Juneau and Nellie, licking their fur tenderly.

The Waning Glory of Latter Days

May 7th, 2022

Much of what I wish to say about these photos is treated, strained in a classifier, its precious substance snatched and withheld for a later date. I have a desire with these posts to expound upon a specific musing that I had at the time of taking a photograph, but for the moment, you must forgive me when I speak vaguely. I have many thoughts when I make my way northwest. Some compel me with unconditional love towards my family, others sit in the dim exospheric edges of my awareness, and most still are quiet ideas that hide in deeper catacombs, and I dread those especially. Articulated or unarticulated, these daemons of various levels swirl into a concocted elixir that seeps into my blood, and without understanding it, I feel a profound sense of love and sadness when I arrive.

Blunt nostalgia is perhaps one obvious explanation, not for the city of Portland or Vancouver of which I have no connection, but in returning to my family. However, I can't help but feel as if I'm cheating truth by calling it such. The word "nostalgia" has been battered and beaten into the mud, and I am myself not free from that guilt, but if ever there was a word that so succinctly captured the array of feelings for such an occasion, it would be that acute homesickness; the pain of returning home, originating in the word itself. But still, my heart warns me that to call it nostalgia is to debase the feeling. After all, there are very few words that themselves encompass any such sharp thought, much less a multitude of thoughts loosely connected, and only through an incessant stream of paragraphs could I feel satisfied in my explanation.

I say this because I am keenly aware of the brute force of nostalgia that I am bombarded with on a daily basis as a result of my hobbies: my love for archiving and the medium of photography to name a few. And I have stood on the irreparably altered remains of my childhood home and wandered on the campuses of former educations to know its illusive temptations. But what I felt at that point in time was more defined and less reminiscent.

During my stay in Vancouver, my parents had the misfortune of contracting the coronavirus, firstly my mother and eventually my father, though he likely received it before. At this point in its development, my fears of its effect on my health were mostly dulled, but I had been put in an uncomfortable position where I had invited Sam to join me and apart from my own need not to miss work as a result of being sick, I didn't want her to contract anything either. My mother had already reached the later stages and wasn't considered contagious when I arrived, but my father was earlier in his ailment and in a great deal of discomfort. He was of course crushed that he couldn't see me, and spiked by these thoughts previously discussed, I would've thrown caution to the wind if it weren't for work and Sam.

Upon his insistence to see me and my desire to see them both, we arranged an outdoor scenario in the backyard. Distanced as we were from each other, the catharsis of being in the presence of one another despite everything overrode any oddity in its arrangement. Lucy danced about the lawn in ecstasy and we sat together peacefully in the haze of the wet spring day under the hanging limbs of the neighborhood trees. The dark clouds parted above for a brief moment, and as the shroud lifted, we watched the sun cast its dim light on the dewy blades of grass, catching the fragile mist as it descended gently onto the soil.

The irony of it all was that Ted had also contracted the virus and later began developing symptoms right as we returned home. In a sense, we were hopelessly surrounded so that any precaution was meaningless. But I don't regret those moments nor will I regret any amount of time I spend with my parents.

The Problem of Morality

May 7th, 2022

I spent most of my days in the northwest with my eldest brother Ted as a result of my parents contracting the coronavirus. The unfortunate circumstances of my job meant that I was always limited in the length of my visits, and I often had to ration myself amongst my siblings and my parents. It was a strange though I dare not say pleasing result that I was allotted more time with Ted, whom I have always desired to share in company, and whom I perceived shared this mutual comfort of conversation. With a regretful yearning poisoned by fear and hesitancy I would eventually see my mother and father, who both later recovered slowly but surely from the virus, but I'll speak of that another time.

Ted and I, be it through our heritage or shared upbringing, carried on ourselves similar dispositions, although the lore of the family always liked to cast me as the more stubborn and less agreeable of the two. Regardless, we tended to trade philosophies, though I admit that's being a little generous on my part. The reality was that growing up, Ted seemed to come to his revelations first, and these ideas would then trickle down to Andrew and I who, enamored with his words, would take authorship of them amongst our peers. I suppose this stream of belief was not unique to our relationship. After all, do we not all collect our thoughts from others, known and unknown into ourselves?

But perhaps now, detached from him in these latter years, I had some semblance of ideas of my own to share, and we often spent long nights rambling to each other in streams of conscious thought barely articulated and comprehensible and yet piercing deeply within each other's hearts. I speak only for myself of course. I can only hope that in age my words have had a fraction of the effect on Ted the way his words did on me.

On this occasion, spurned on by an interaction on the street, Ted and I trailed off into a discussion about the proper etiquette towards the homeless and eventually into the pitfalls of traditional morality in the context of western Christianity. I found myself shamefully eager that Sam was present to witness us in the midst of these conversations. Apart from the pride in my falsely perceived intellect which I confess is a hideous fault of mine (not to be confused with the "burden of intellect" itself, which would be a ridiculous thing for me to confess), I had a genuine desire for Sam to engage in our discussion or at the very least for Ted to interact with her more directly, such was my deep love and admiration for both of them. But of course, it was within the character of Sam that she paced behind us, quietly, attentively listening, and I was afraid to ask if she was deep in contemplation or slowly losing the thread of our incoherent conversation (I suppose it was a bit of both).

Surrounded by the luminous green of the late spring forest, densely packed in the cool, humid air of the northwest, I had a faint recollection of New York and the fringes of a memory so distant enough as to become indecipherable from a dream. The content of our dialogue was perhaps only meaningful to us at that point in time, and what might now still feel sharp in the torrential swirl of ideas in my contemporary mind will soon fade into obscurity and irrelevance; thoughts incapable of being recalled though they may still reside in me like lost volumes tucked away in the back rooms of a library. What will remain in bursts of lucid detail among other things will be the color green, the rapid trill of a speculated song sparrow darting among the enveloping branches, the company of those I loved amidst the gentle overture of spring mist, and beyond me, jpegs on a hard drive and places temporary.