Tumbling toward two years of every-day “old house journaling” (and a 200% overshoot of the original challenge I set for myself at the beginning of August 2022) I’m abundantly aware of the rewards and the shortfalls of my daily discourse.
Now 20-1/2 months — 626 days of reflective, inquisitive, whimsical, experimental old house journaling — into my Rosslyn Redux reboot, let’s turn again to the underlying question: what’s my holy grail?
I should start with some of my observations half a year ago.
I dove deep into this sprawling exposition I call Rosslyn Redux… my multidisciplinary meditation on the *art of homing*… this exploration, this inside-out creative experiment, this quasi crowdsourced inquiry, and the resulting nexus of artifacts and stories and visuals and poems and all of the esoteric marginalia that has accreted… since Susan and I bought Rosslyn is meaningful. Heck, to be 100% candid, for me it’s not just meaningful; it’s vital.
… I’m aware that I have journeyed far… but not far enough. I’m confident now that if I can continue this questing inquiry a little longer, I will at last close in on the Holy Grail.
(Source: Old Year’s Day & New Year’s Day)
There it is. And there it isn’t. A casual throwaway as if the reader knows what I’m referring to. As if I know what I’m referring to.
Here’s another fleeting glance.
… my daily deep dive has become habit; my inquiry has lead to unanticipated, sometimes surprising realizations; and I’m only just beginning to find my bearings and glimpse the holy grail.
What *IS* my holy grail in this inquisitive quest through Rosslyn monuments and middens? Where am I going with this adventure? What am I hoping to achieve?
[…]
Daily analysis, meditation, introspection, experimentation, curation, hypothesis, and, yes, some belly button gazing too… wondering. Wandering. Every day. Asking questions. That lead to more questions. Trying to ascertain why and how Rosslyn, an historic property on the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain invited us into a relationship; allowed us to develop alongside her, with her, through her; enveloping us in a passionate, trusting, and transformative home… endeavoring, essaying, questing, exploring, experimenting,… But *WHAT* am I trying to achieve?
(Source: Holy Grail?)
Where am I going? Where am I *TRYING* to go? What is my goal? What are my goals? What is the overarching achievement that inspires this day-after-day discursive journey?
I return to the thoughts of Nick Bantock that I cited last fall.
Funny how in all the years I’ve been creating books, in all the interviews and with all the audience questions, no one has ever asked me the fundamental question, “What is it you’ve been trying to achieve with your work?”
[…]
In hindsight, here’s my response :
With Griffin and Sabine, I was trying to bring together words and images in a way that united opposing aspects of our perception… I badly needed to form a dialogue between my logical and intuitive sides.
Purely in terms of the fiction, I wanted to use the intimacy of correspondence to express the longing that most of us experience. The longing to be seen and accepted. *Ironically the envelopes which became the books trademark, were simply devices to magnify the reader/viewer’s sense of participation.
Nick Bantock (Facebook, September 11, 2023)
This is really the gist that concerned / concerns me. He went on to offer similar insights into each of his other books. Not relevant here.
My previous Holy Grail rumination included an anknowledgment that my efforts to, in Bantock’s words, “form a dialogue between my logical and intuitive sides” inevitably lead to some blurring.
At some level this website [Rosslyn Redux], these field notes and meditations, these archives and poems have been an attempt to discern a reason for some of the decisions we’ve [Susan and I] made. And an inventory of memorable moments along the way. Perhaps, sometimes even an effort to overlay a logic that may not actually have been evident at the time. I’ve acknowledged more than once that retrospection, the vagaries of subjective memory, the siren call of creative license, and the existential need to find meaning and justification inevitably blur the boundaries of life lived and crafted facsimile.
(Source: Holy Grail?)
So where has all of this rehashing brought me? Well, one obvious takeaway is that I’ve re-cultivated this endeavor — a website about our home, the art of homing, and our trajectory across the last [almost] two decades at this home — in the hope and faith that disciplining myself to this daily discourse might “form a dialogue between my logical and intuitive sides”.
Discourse
I’d like to draw attention to Bantock’s use of the words “dialogue” and “correspondence”. (NB: It would be irresponsible to overlook an influence of the Griffin and Sabine series as encouraging cairns (almost Vade Mecums like The Odyssey, Quixote, and Zweig’s Adventurers) that have offered me glimmers of direction and possibility as I’ve explored our relationship with Rosslyn.)
But what of dialogue and correspondence?
“the intimacy of correspondence to express the longing that most of us experience. The longing to be seen and accepted.”
Nick Bantock (Facebook, September 11, 2023)
In so many respects Rosslyn Redux is a prolonged correspondence with our home. I’ve understood my inquiry a sort of epistolary memoir, a not-too-distant cousin to my desktop scattered with stacks of notes, letters, sketches, poems, artifacts,… But I understand Rosslyn as an entity. A companion. A being. Not just an inanimate home or property. My daily discourse is most often with her.
Logical & Intuitive
This dialogue with Rosslyn is a bridge between the logical and the intuitive. On the one hand I well accept that this name describes a menagerie of historic buildings presiding over almost seventy acres of waterfront, gardens, orchards, meadows, and woods. And it’s logical too that Susan and I are calculating an appropriate future for our relationship with our home.
But braided into this discursive initiative is a less logical, profoundly emotional and psychological relationship with Rosslyn. There’s an intimacy, a passion, a trust, and a powerful and enduring attraction that connects us with Rosslyn.
My holy grail is in no small part grappling with this potent pull. Seeking to understand it. To honor it. And, in due course, to begin untethering…
As I approach two years of daily discourse with Rosslyn, this holy grail is at long last coming into focus.
Leave a Reply