Back to basics…

I bought a piece of artwork once, from a catalog I think it was.  This was years ago when I was young.  It was a distant landscape in mostly browns and golds, in the foreground was wheat or hay, and the horizon line was broken by a small cabin with a TV antenna on the roof.  Images like that appeal to me still.

Years later we took back roads for the last part of our trips to visit my daughter in upstate New York, and I’ve never forgotten an image from one trip at Christmas time.  It was after dark and we were traveling rural roads with nothing much to see, when off in the distance there was a small house with a string of lights hanging crookedly from an equally crooked porch.  It brought me to tears when I saw it, and it has stayed in my mind like a photo I could take out and look at over and over.

For some reason these images are back in my mind right now.  It started when I walked yesterday and I noticed all the Christmas lights in this modest mobile home park.  I have admired how much pride people have taken in their homes here.  Many, not mine, are spit-polished and look very inviting.  I decided to walk again last night to see those displays after dark.  If there is a point to all this then it has escaped me.  Unless it’s that yes, I’ve spent time in my life wishing for more, trying to keep up, but back to the basics is where I was meant to be all along.