November 5, 2024
It's Bonfire Night back in the UK, where I grew up. I've been gone so long I don't know if and how it's still celebrated. "Penny for the guy," we used to cry, when I was very small, and we'd perch him—just a raggedy stick figure thing, hastily constructed—upon a stack of firewood and watch him blaze. Later, I recall only fireworks, and hand-held sparklers, painting the air about me with the swing of their sizzle.
I made a pixel painting yesterday, and found it filling with the anxiety that's been simmering in me throughout this election season. No predictions about results—they may be imminent—but fears about the outcome either way, in the light of what happened on January 6, 2021. In principle, the paintograph is just a composite of two rather lovely images, one taken at Maymont, the other at Reedy Creek. I'd concocted one using similar elements a couple of days earlier—I'll post it at the foot of the page—and it may have just a hint of daredevilry and even menace to it (how does that channel veering off the page center left not plummet into that abyss?), but mostly, it's sweetly bucolic. But this one, with its colonnaded canal, its paddleboarders and rafters staring down a suddenly raging current—which is a third component image, by the way, of the James River nearing flood stage— is considerably more troubled. And though the landscapes to the left and right may be markedly different, I can't say I find comfort and coziness in either of them. The sky over the green wilderness at right I deliberately darkened, to suggest a coming storm. But I'd left the park trees and the mowed grass at right pretty much as is, and I'd expected them to suggest a lovely if shadowy escape route. But I'll be darned if now it doesn't seem menacing—too empty; too quiet; what might be lurking in those shadows?
"Early returns aren't looking great," says Sally, coming downstairs to update me. But "early" is still too early, surely. Paddleboarders, should we buckle up or come ashore? Plenty of room between the columns there, if not much time. The woods are lovely, green, and deep. Nothing, friends, is on fire yet.
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